OUR TOWN 




UGENE WOOD 





Copyright N" J 





COPyRIGHT DEPOSrr, 



OUR TOWN 




Mt.&HAvra 
" Samatter witches? " you'd say. 



OUR TOWN 



BY 

EUGENE WOOD 

Author of "Back Home" 

Illustrated by 
J. R, Shaver and Horace Taylor 




RICHARD G. BADGER 

BOSTON 



Copyright, 1913, by Richard G. Badger 



All Rights Reserved 

Entered at Stationers' Hall 



T^^'^^OS 



0^1^ 



\^i^ 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



/ 



©CI.A351928 



TO 

THE FOLKS OF 

OUR TOWN 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Glorious Fourth 13 

The Old Time Revival 49 

The Drama in Our Town 89 

The Campaign Back Home 137 

The Parlor Back Home 169 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

'' Samatter witchesf '' youd say . . . . Frontispiece "^ 

And will blow on it to see 17 

You felt the shivers running all over you . . .27 

Elsie, in her stars-and-stripes dress 3^ 

Took delight in wrestling 90 

They had to buy melodeons and pianos .... 92 

ISlow, take the Swiss Bell-ringers 94 

The elocution teacher came to town .... 95 

The fellow that played the " tooby " could go down 
to the barn 9^ 

Has to keep one ear hung out for the rattle of a 
wagon 99 

He crashes through the hazel bush lOi 

You heard what Brother Longnecker said about that 103 

'" Goin to the Opry-House to-night f . . . .105 

To set a good example to the young ill 

" Au, that aint nothing/^ said he 1 14 

One day the man that papered your house left a 
ticket for you 122 

You were in the front row 123 

The colored band from the South End . . . .125 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

To be continued in our next 127 

When was it you began to subscribe for a theatrical 
paper? 131 

Its petals were kind of droopy 171 

D'ye reckon Barzillai'll come in for his sheerf . .175 

No good at all for chewing wax 182 

There were haircloth sofas 185 

Her husband was afraid 190 

/ dont know what kinds of yarbs 197 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

[ 

THEY say every dog has his day. I 
don't remember just when the dog-days 
come — some time in hot weather, I be- 
lieve — but I'll swear the Fourth of 
July isn't one of them. 

I never had a hunting-dog, so I am prepared 
to believe that one of them might put up with the 
boisterous noises that gunpowder makes. Per- 
haps he might even come to find that the shot- 
gun's disconcerting bang! which at first made him 
jump part way out of his hide, imparted to his 
nerves a titillating rasp, very desirable. But 
when I consider the Fourth of July as related to 
dogs I have in mind the ordinary four-legged 
garbage-can, the dear companion of our youth, 
Maje, or Tige, or Bounce, or Gyp, or Fido, or 
Spot, or whatever he was named, that long ago 
has gone before us in the way we too must walk 
one day. Poor old dog! When he laid his muz- 

13 



OUR TOWN 

zle on our knee, and looked so longingly at us 
with his big brown eyes, I know his soul flung it- 
self despairingly at the thin partition of speechless- 
ness that separated him from us. Poor old dog! 
He was neither useful nor ornamental. He was 
just a hanger-on, and could pay for his keep only 
with his company, but he was none the less beloved 
for all that. Lots of men have no better excuse 
for being. 

On other feasts and fasts, when anything was 
going on, he was right there, Johnny-on-the-Spot, 
close to the footlights in the center of the stage, 
but on the Nation's Birthday his native modesty 
asserted itself and he withdrew from public gaze. 

*' How would it be," we asked each other after 
the first few firecrackers, when an awfully funny 
notion struck us, " how would it be if we took and 
tied — " The knowing look passed from eye to 
eye. "Where is he? H-yuh Spot! H-yuh 
Spot! H-yuh! H-yuh! Whoo-eet! " 

Wouldn't he act funny, though? He wouldn't 
know what struck him. H-yuh Spot! Why, 
where was the darn dog? 

14 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

For he came not bounding to us, wiping his 
paws on our clean waists that our Ma had put on 
us that day with: "Now, don't burn any holes 
in that," and *' Don't you get it to looking like a 
mop inside of five minutes." He did not leap 
upon us, licking our faces in moist caress. We 
hunted him high and low. 

"H-yuh Spot! H-yuh Spot!— The bam! 
Betchy anything he's in under the barn." 

We sought the hole he usually crawled in. 
Away, 'way over in the far corner we made out 
two flaming red disks, that bashfully averted them- 
selves when we began our blandishments. 

'* Noi-oi-oice old doggie ! Ya-a-ase, he was a 
noice old fellah. Come here. Come here." In 
vain we fluted the word " Come " and expressed 
an almost tearful affection. We could hear his 
tail thump, and he whined as much as to say he'd 
like awfully to oblige, but really we'd have to ex- 
cuse him this time. 

Now, what I want to know Is : What put him 
wise to what we were up to? Was it talked 
around in dog society about firecrackers tied to 

15 



OUR TOWN 

tails? There was a forsaken, homeless fice came 
down South Main Street on a Fourth, and made 
friends with a fellow in front of Ryan's place, a 
fellow with a keen sense of humor, who would 
sacrifice a whole pack of firecrackers as lief as not. 
Well, sir, that dog just about tore up the earth 
getting away from there when the popping began. 
He banged into everything, and squalled " Ah- 
oop ! Ah-oop ! " in shrill falsetto. The funniest 
thing you ever heard of. Aaron Williams, who 
kept the tin-shop, like to hurt himself laughing. 
He screamed, and slapped his legs, and stamped 
on the ground in an ecstasy of mirth. The fice 
crawled under the tin-shop (which was right next 
to the cooper-shop) and it promptly took fire and 
burned to the ground. Aaron laughed out of the 
other side of his mouth at that. 

But, even suppose Spot had heard talk of that, 
how could he remember? It's a mighty long time 
from one Fourth of July to another, I'll have you 
understand. (Or at least it used to be so. It's 
got so now they whiz a-past so fast you get a crick 
in the neck from watching them.) Why should 

i6 







And will blow on it to see. 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

a dog remember that firecrackers are dangerous 
things, when a boy can't? I'll bet you any money 
that this coming Fourth there'll be at least half a 
dozen boys who will wonder (all new, as if it had 
never been done before) if the fuse of a giant fire- 
cracker hasn't gone out, and will blow on it to see, 
and will find it hasn't gone out, and — well, don't 
let's begin the horrible part of it so soon. 

Only, I marvel why Spot should have crawled 
under the barn before the day got really good and 
going. 

And, now that I think of it, I don't remember 
seeing much of the cat on that day either. Come 
anywhere near him ordinarily, and he would thin 
his body upward, and rub his hairs off on your leg, 
purring like a coffee-mill, but if you saw him this 
day, he was all scrooched up, and gave you a malig- 
nant glare, as much as to say: "You're the 
young divvle that tied my feet up in papers, ain't 
ye? You dast to lay a hand on me — " And as 
you took one step toward him, he was gone like 
lightning in a cloud. 

I seem to recollect a buggy splintered and slid- 

19 



OUR TOWN 

ing on Its side, with a man dragged by the lines, 
his face as white as putty except for a thin trickle 
of blood on the forehead. It seems to me I smell 
firecrackers as I see this, but whether In memory 
or imagination I cannot say for certain. Never- 
theless, I believe that dogs and cats and horses 
and Mas do not approve of the Glorious 
Fourth. 

However It might be with them, it was certainly 
the Day of Days for the rest of us. Other festi- 
vals connoted hatreds of the other fellows, pen- 
ning the flock off into little coops of ancient re- 
ligious and racial spats and feuds. But on Our 
Country's Birthday all these partitions and spite- 
fences came down. Rich and poor, high and low, 
white and black, Republican and Democrat, Jew 
and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, native-born 
and foreign-born forgot for once their petty anti- 
social meannesses, and joined In the celebration of 
the day whereon a whole people cried out In the 
hearing of an unbelieving world that God had 
made all men free and equal, and bestowed upon 
them rights that cannot be bargained away or 

20 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

overridden by force — the rights to life and 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Everywhere 
floated the Flag " whose banners make tyranny 
tremble," and in every home Ma tied up burnt 
fingers with apple-butter and a rag. 

It is fine to think that upon this day, all over 
this broad land of ours, we lay aside our business 
and pay our homage to a doctrine that we respect 
even if we do think it is too righteous to be prac- 
tical. '^ All over this broad land," did I say? 
Ah, me ! I wish it were so. But they tell me that 
in southern Indiana Fourth of July is little thought 
of, not half so much as the Annual Celebration 
of the Morehead Settlement, whatever that may 
be. They shut up the stores, it's true, but they 
save their shooting crackers and their fireworks 
for Christmas Day! For Christmas Day! 
Isn't that Hoosier for you? Why, punk-sticks 
and scraps of red paper smoldering in the gutter, 
and empty Roman candle tubes that you can blow 
on like a bottle belong in hot weather, not when 
there's snow on the ground. They can't make 
me think Indiana Is really civilized, I don't care 

21 



OUR TOWN 

how many literary geniuses come from there, when 
the people act like that. 

Speaking of Christmas Day, Fourth of July re- 
sembles it in just one respect, early rising. On 
Christmas Day you want to; on Fourth of July 
you have to. You may be having ever so thrill- 
ing a dream; you may be clinging by finger-hold 
to the slanting top of a granite cliff nine miles 
high, and polished like Colonel Hoosey's monu- 
ment in the cemetery. You can't go on with your 
dream after that vociferous '* Boong! " that rat- 
tles on your windows just before sunup. " Yes ! " 
you cry, " I'm up ! " your daily lie, this morning 
utterly unnecessary, as you sheepishly realize the 
moment after. It's a waste of time to try to turn 
over for another nap. In the early days of our 
Republic you might have counted off thirteen loud 
" Boongs " and composed yourself for more slides 
over the edges of granite cliffs ; but now that there 
are — How many are there now? Be-switched 
if I can keep track of 'em. 

And, by the way, did you know that one Fourth 
they wouldn't shoot off but twelve guns? The 

22 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

old Confederation had petered out, and all but 
little Rhody had come under the " new roof " 
of the Constitution. In those days there wasn't 
any Senator Aldrich to hold the rest of the coun- 
try up by the tail, and the other folks were pretty 
hot about such carryings-on. If little Rhody 
hadn't come right down off her perch, and acted 
white in a hurry, they were going to put up tariff 
walls against her goods, and let her flock all by 
herself and see how she liked it. 

In the matter of our national salute at dawn 
I feel a sense of deep personal humiliation. 
Other people can tell you interesting stories about 
the cannon they had in their town " back home," 
and how there was a rivalry between the Hill 
crowd and the Valley crowd as to which should 
get hold of it, and hide it from the others. They 
can tell you all about Who's-this-now that was 
In such a hurry he didn't swab out the gun good, 
and when What's-his-name was ramming home the 
charge, blamed if she didn't go off, ker-boongi 
and there was his arm gone, slick as a whistle. 
And they felt so terrible that they went away 

23 



OUR TOWN 

and left the cannon, and the other fellows got 
it and kept it for two years. Two years! What 
do you think of that? We didn't have any can- 
non. Kind of a one-horse place, I'm afraid. And 
even if we had had one, my folks wouldn't have 
let me have anything to do with it. (I never had 
any kind of a time at all.) To this day, I don't 
know the first thing about loading up an anvil and 
shooting it off on the Fourth of July. I don't 
even know which is the trigger end of an anvil. 
But I'm fairly well posted on firecrackers, little 
square flat packs, you know, with a thin red paper 
stuck on, stamped with a gilt dragon and funny 
letters that didn't spell anything. Each of us got 
a whole single pack and two punk-sticks, and that 
had to last out the day. Down-town after dark, 
wild fellows that had lots of money to spend used 
to set off a whole pack at a time. That was reck- 
less extravagance, but it was splendid on that ac- 
count. Who cares for ten cents? Plenty more 
where that came from ! And to hear the snap- 
ping like corn in a popper, only more so, and to 
see the flashes of light in the darkness, jerking 

24 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

this way and that! Gur-reat! Great! And, 
after you'd think the whole pack was gone, there'd 
be one solitary snap as much as to say: " Here! 
I'm in this too. You don't want to overlook me.'^ 
It was great. There's no two ways about it; it 
was great. But that was for the evening and 
somebody else. In the morning we had our own 
firecrackers while our enthusiasm still had a cut- 
ting edge, and we were careful in disentangling 
the crackers' little tails from the braided fuse with 
which they interwove. When we shot one off it 
was with a screwed-up wincing face and we tasted 
a fearful joy. We used to heap up forts of dust, 
and p'tend the cannons were pointing out through 
" embrasures." (They had " embrasures " in 
"The History of the Great Rebellion.") The 
worst of It was that the siege-guns would destroy 
the illusion by all coming apart. If you broke 
off the end of one and touched the punk-stick to 
the black dust in the muzzle of the gun It would 
shoot out fire just as in the picture of the Monitor 
and the Merrimac, but It was only a " fizzer," and 
anyhow you don't touch off a real cannon from the 

25 



OUR TOWN 

front end. Still, you could piece out a good deal 
with imagination, and, after all, that's where the 
fun comes in. I pity the poor young ones these 
days that have toys and playthings that look ex- 
actly like real things. 

It was also kind of exciting to stand on a fire- 
cracker and feel the pleasant jolt it gave when it 
exploded. That is, it was pleasant if you had 
shoes on; it kind o' stung if you were barefooted. 

And you could light one and hold it In your 
fingers until je-e-e-est the last fractional part of 
a second when the fuse was beginning to act hys- 
terical and fidgety, and then you flung It up high 
and It was " the bomb bursting in air," as it says 
In the *' Star-spangled Banner." Out of this prac- 
tise developed a test of heroism similar in spirit 
to the sun-dance of the Indian braves. You held 
one in your fingers (as far off as you could, and 
with your eyes all squinched up) and felt the shiv- 
ers running all over you as the fuse began to 
sputter, and when you lived through the shock of 
the explosion, how happy you were ! That called 

26 




You felt the shivers running all over you. 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

for real courage, and in some cases, if I mistake 
not, it called for witch-hazel too. 

And there was an intellectual problem in con- 
nection with firecrackers. Why was there one in 
the pack sometimes that was wrapped with green 
paper instead of red? I have puzzled over that 
no little, and it still remains the dark mystery it 
always was. What was there about it that de- 
served the green paper? It wasn't louder than 
the others; it wasn't weaker than the others, for 
those who said it always was a fizzer generalized 
from insufficient data, as boys are wont to do. All 
our lives long we are jostled and elbowed by rid- 
dles we cannot solve, and this is one of them. 
Old Maje, who cannot talk, and we who cannot 
understand — we're all alike. 

Firecrackers are the norm of Fourth of July. 
On the timid side, explosives shade off into the 
pink paper disks that your little brother shoots 
in a brown varnished cast-iron dummy pistol. 

" Now don't you go pointing that at people," 
excitedly cries your mother. 

" Aw ! That cain't shoot nothin'," you explain, 

29 



OUR TOWN 

scandalized at her crass ignorance. *' Can't you 
see it don't go through from the cap place to the 
barrel?" 

" You don't know what might happen," she 
persists, in her unreasoning way. *' You hear tell 
of lots of people getting killed with guns that 
weren^t loaded. What ever possessed you. Pa, 
to go and get that boy a pistol beats me. You 
know he just delights in running headlong into 
danger. It would serve you right if he was 
marked for life with that thing. Mercy me I 
I'll be glad when this day's over. Elsie ! Come 
here to me. Come away from that firecracker." 

(Women are awful foolish. They haven't got 
near the sense of us men-folks.) 

Elsie, in her Stars-and-Stripes frock, has these 
twisted white paper torpedoes, that crack when 
you throw them hard down on the sidewalk. 
They're very nearly as loud as a parlor match 
and a little safer. They fretted your mother as 
much as the firecrackers though; they mussed up 
the place so. There's nothing that makes a front 

30 




Elsie, in her stars-and-stripes dress. 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

porch look so slack as scraps of paper and little 
bits of gravel. 

Beyond the firecracker on the bold side was the 
bottle of powder. With that you could lay a 
train to where you had poured out quite a little 
heap of powder and covered it with dirt. That 
was a rebel fort you were going to blow up. It's 
fine sport, and if you should ever meet a man with 
a glass eye and a lot of blue specks in his face, 
you ask him if he doesn't think so, for it is almost 
certain that he played that very game when he was 
young. 

But away, 'way out on the bold side is the re- 
volver. Not one of these brown varnished cast- 
iron things where it doesn't go through from the 
cap place to the barrel, but the real thing, a re- 
volver that you can put real " cattridges " in made 
out of real lead bullets, one that you can kill peo- 
ple with, and can carry around in your hip-pocket. 
It must give a fellow a lot of moral courage to 
have one. You could bend down the front of 
your Johnny Jones hat, and smack it up behind, 
and kind of slouch it over one eye, and you'd rock 

33 



OUR TOWN 

your head a little from side to side, and talk out of 
the corner of your mouth. *' Samatter witches? " 
you'd say. Just like that. And if anybody got 
too gay or anything, you wouldn't have to call 
out: " Quit now! Quit, I tell you. Now you 
just leave me be I " No. You'd smile a baleful 
smile, and press the cold ring of the muzzle into 
his quivering flesh and coldly remark: " That'll 
be about all from you. Un'stand? " And he'd 
understand right away. 

Why, talk about learning how to box so as to 
be able to protect yourself, a revolver has the 
manly art of self-defense beaten to a stiff froth. 
I don't care how handy with your fists you might 
be, the other fellow might be handier, or he might 
be bigger, or he mightn't fight according to the 
Marquis of Queensbury. And anyways, you'd be 
sure to be rumpled up some before you got 
through, your nose bleeding, or one eye a little 
puffy. But with the revolver you just go Bang! 
Bang! and there he is flat on the sidewalk. 

Any day in the year a revolver is a fine thing 
for a boy to have, but especially is it a fine thing 

34 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

on the Fourth of July. It puts you right up where 
you belong, among the nobility and gentry. It 
takes you out of the ranks of mere kids that play 
with firecrackers. An old-maidish and fussy pub- 
lic opinion prescribes blank cartridges when one 
shoots to make the occasion gay with noise. I 
suppose it's well to defer for the sake of keeping 
out of trouble; but if it was me, I'd shoot real 
bullets. I should think it would sound nicer, and 
there' d be more excitement in it. I should try not 
to kill anybody, of course, but — 

I don't know of anything that more effectively 
convinces the man who has grown up and come to 
New York to live that the country is going to the 
dogs as fast as the wheels of time can carry it than 
the horrifying discovery that the metropolitan 
young ones begin the firecracker season along about 
Decoration Day, and keep it up till some time in 
August. Well, maybe, it isn't quite as bad as that, 
but when you're positive that the country is going 
to the dogs, you've simply got to make your state- 
micnts a leetle strong in order to arouse the people 
to their lost condition. And that the firecracker 

35 



OUR TOWN 

season should be prolonged by even so much as 
one day is enough to make any peace-loving citizen 
tremble for our institutions. Oh, my unhappy 
country! For anything they do in New York is 
sure to become all the go in the outlying districts 
one of these days. And then what will be the 
use in fixing your vacation so that you will get the 
Fourth out in the country? Why, in my day and 
time, a boy that would shoot off a firecracker on 
the third of July was a sneak. It was just as bad 
as peeking on a Christmas Eve. And a boy that 
would shoot off a firecracker on the fifth of July 
was green and behind the times. To be sure, if 
you happened to find in the dewy grass the next 
morning a firecracker with its fuse half-burnt, you 
were allowed to put it out of its misery, and a 
waif and stray you might set off. But that was 
only to prevent a wicked waste. It was on the 
same principle that you eat when you are so full 
you can hardly crowd it down; you suffer, so that 
the food won't have to be thrown away. But 
to deliberately buy shooting-crackers and set 
them off a day before or a day after the Fourth 

36 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

— The mind reels with horror from the bare 
suggestion. And yet such is the degeneracy of 
the age, they do that very thing in New York 
City year by year and never bat an eye. 

Along about dinner-time — well, lunch-time, 
then, if you're possessed to put on airs; you know 
what I mean, noon — the day sort of petered out. 
The firecrackers were all gone, and excessively 
early rising was getting in its deadly work. But 
the main reason, I do believe, was the same that 
makes the grocery man put in only about two inches 
of sweet sugar on the top of the barrel, and fill 
up the rest with sugar that has a kind of bitterish, 
cloying taste. Nothing can be more delightful 
than an irregular series of sharp explosions; but 
it's like everything else, " there comes a time." 
If I were a free man, and could be as psycho- 
logical as I dog-gone pleased, nothing would 
suit me better than to cut loose right here, and 
show you the cause of this tendency on the part 
of metropolitan children to prolong the excite- 
ment of the firecracker season; how, deprived as 
they are of all the fun that they really ought to 

37 



OUR TOWN 

have, they seek violent and unwholesome stimula- 
tion; and to point out that I wasn't altogether 
fooling when I talked about the degeneracy of 
the age. But they dock my pay every time I get 
serious. So you'll have to figure it out for your- 
self, or else read about it in some big book with 
" subjective " and " objective " and ^' telic " and 
" genetic " and all such cruel and unusual words 
In It. 

The afternoon of the Fourth of July has a 
strong tendency to be poky. To avert this ca- 
tastrophe many devices have been introduced. 
One of them is to have a picnic. Now, there are 
two opposing and mutually exclusive schools of 
thought in re the Fourth of July picnic. The one 
school holds that It always rains on that afternoon; 
the other denies that proposition, and maintains 
that those who so vividly recall standing under a 
tree — a tree as a shelter when It rains pitchforks 
and feather-beds is the rankest kind of a swindle, 
and something ought to be done about It — stand- 
ing under a leaky tree and watching " the little 
men " jumping In the lemonade-tub while the 

38 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

table-cloths soak into sodden rags, and the 
layer cake pitifully dissolves, are really thinking 
of the annual Sabbath-school picnic, when of course 
it rains. I dislike very much to take sides on 
any question. I am like the politician who was 
campaigning in a neighborhood divided on en- 
tirely non-political lines into two parties, one 
maintaining that it was just foolishness to say 
that the earth turned clear over every day, and 
the other that it must be so because it said so in 
the geography book. *' You know about such 
things," they asked him. *' Now, does it? It 
don't, does it? Not clear over? " 

"Well. ... Ha! ... It does a little," he 
said. 

I will concede this much : That in view of the 
grea-eat concussion of the atmosphere on the 
Glorious Fourth, due to the well-nigh universal ex- 
plosion of firecrackers, cap-pistols, anvils, and all 
such, it is not antecedently impossible — mark my 
words — it is not antecedently impossible that 
here and there some rain might be joggled loose 
from whatever it is stuck to up there in the sky. 

39 



OUR TOWN 

And If the picnic were announced for a consider- 
able period of time beforehand, I think It ex- 
tremely likely that it would rain. If it was got 
up on short notice, why, the weather might be 
taken by surprise and so not be able to squeeze 
out a shower. Still, I shouldn't like to commit 
myself either way. I'm only telling you. 

I suppose that away back in the early days they 
had regular celebrations of the day In which the 
school children took part and sang the grand old 
patriotic airs, of which we know the tune but not 
the words. Indeed, in the song-book they had In 
the schools there was a piece that seemed to have 
been made on purpose for the Fourth of July. 
The Continental Congress wouldn't let a living 
soul know what was going on, but the people 
felt kind of Interested to know whether or not 
they were to be broken off from the old country. 
It being a hanging matter, and so the Congress 
strained a point and agreed to have the bell rung 
In case the Declaration was passed. Now, away, 
'way up in the belfry (and if you've ever been In 
Independence Hall you know It is a terribly tall 

40 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

building — I guess, anyways, three stories tall 
without the belfry) there was the sexton and — 
But I'd better quote a verse of the song: 

High in the belfry the old sexton stands, 

Grasping the rope In his thin, bony hands; 

Fixed Is his gaze, as by some magic spell, 

Till he hears the welcome tidings: " Ring, ring the bell! " 

Chorus — "Ring the bell, grandpa! Ring! Ring! 

Ring!" 
Yes, yes, the good news is now on the wing. 
Yes, yes, they come! And with tidings to tell, 
Glorious and blessed tidings ! " Ring, ring the bell ! " 

You see, it was his little grandson that told him 
when to ring, and — well, it was a nice song, 
but we never got a chance to sing it on the Fourth 
of July, because school was let out then, and they 
never had regular doings on that day, " back 
home." 

Oh, yes, they did too. Now that I think of it, 
they did celebrate the Birthday of the Nation once 
by a regular program. They had a sack race, and 
a three-legged race, and a potato race, and a fat 
men's race, and a slow race, and a ladies' race, 

41 



OUR TOWN 

which Is not the same thing as a slow race. And 
they chased the greased pig, which was funny be- 
cause the pig was thoroughly excited, and squealed 
hysterically, and tripped people up and played 
hob generally. And they had climbing the greased 
pole, which wasn't nearly as funny as you'd think 
it would be. And the band played and played 
and played till, when it was all over, not one of 
them except the two men on the battery could 
have whistled if It was to save his life. Hadn't 
any lip. Or rather they had too much lip, for 
every horn-player's mouth looked as if it had been 
stepped on and had had time to swell. It was a 
grand time, and the Examiner said It was " a cele- 
bration worthy of the festive occasion." 

I forgot whether they had strawberry short- 
cake that night for supper or not. That's kind 
of stupefying, you know. Anyhow there was 
something we could eat a lot of, something 
that made a snug fit for our appetites after 
such a busy day, so that after dark began to 
fall, it seemed a long, long time since we had 
jumped to hear the window-rattling " BoongI '* 

42 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

of the first gun of the national salute. Pap gave 
us an imitation of a skyrocket by knocking the 
dottle from his pipe, and pretty soon away off 
down-town the real rockets began to garter- 
snake their upward way through 
the air, opening up when they had 
climbed their height, and fling- 
ing colored jewels by the reckless 
handful, red, and green, and blue 
and white, sometimes broadcast, 
and sometimes strung upon a 
thread, as it were, a broken neck- 
lace on the dusky bosom of the 
night. For a while we wondered 
at the sheer beauty of it all, and 
then a little longer we amused 
ourselves with mimicking them, 
*^ s-s-s-s Tockf Look out for the 
stick!'' But more and more the 
lovely vision melted into reverie. 
The fire balloons drifted farther 
and farther, low-hanging, flicker- 
ing stars that seemed to beckon Q 

43 



OUR TOWN 

our ambition toward the conquest of the kingdom 
of the air. . . . We sighed ... we longed with 
longing, somehow gently sad until — until — 

"Here, mister! Time for you to be in bed. 
Pillows a-hollerin' for you." 

You may have noticed that I haven't said a 
word about the public reading of the Declaration 
of Independence. It didn't happen. Never in 
my life have I heard that read aloud, clear 
through. When that Immortal statement was 
first put forth, nobody dreamed that those who 
worked for wages had any rights. In those cruel 
days, ere ever compassion had been born, the ne- 
gro slave was better off than the poor wretch 
who owned no property. The ballot was later 
given to him grudgingly, but this government of 
ours didn't become his and Isn't now. It Isn't 
meant to be. The way we live, the average 
wages of the men and women who take the raw 
earth that God Almighty gave to all His children 
for a heritage, and turn it into what we eat and 
wear and take our comfort from, the average 

44 



THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 

wages of the men and women who put all the value 
into anything that has a value, is about $400 a 
year. Some get more; more get less. Figure 
to yourself how much of life a man can have on 
$400 a year; how much of liberty; how he can 
pursue happiness after his board and keep are paid 
for. In the census year of 1900 those who have 
only themselves to sell made in this country thir- 
teen billions of dollars' worth of goods; out of 
that thirteen billion dollars' worth they got two 
billion dollars. Who got the other eleven billion 
dollars? I'll take my oath it wasn't George the 
Third. Caesar had his Brutus, Charles his Crom- 
well, George the Third his Washington, and 
— if that be treason, make the most of it. 

It didn't do to read the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. It made folks uneasy. That Smith 
who had been rescued from the obscurity native to 
Smiths by his ferocious soubriquet of "Hell-roar- 
ing Jake" did the State some service when he de- 
scribed the Declaration of Independence as " a 
damned incendiary document." That's just what 
it is. Particularly that part where it says that 

45 



OUR TOWN 

whenever a government does not preserve to all 
the people their rights to life and liberty and hap- 
piness, it is about time to change the form of gov- 
ernment and get the kind that will preserve them. 

I think it would be a good thing to revive the 
practise of reading aloud the essay of that red- 
headed fiddler fellow from Virginia. It is 130 
years old, I know, but it is so far from being 
out of date that these restless days of ours are 
the days when it is most likely to be realized in 
full. 

On its Inspiration we did the business for 
George the Third. It seems to me it's good for 
one more whirl. 



46 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

WHENEVER anybody begins to com- 
plain about " nowadays," we wink at 
those of our own generation and 
start in to be funny. 
*' Well, now, grandpap," we ask, with a ro- 
guish look at the others, " do you really think 
water is quite as wet now as it was in your young 
days?" 

Because, you know, if anybody says that this 
present age is in any wise inferior to any age that 
ever went before — that it is not superior to all 
the ages that ever went before lumped in one 
lump, why, that's a sure sign that he is getting 
childish and failing very fast. 

And yet we cannot talk long with those who 
linger with us for more than threescore years and 
ten ere we discover that something they had is 
lacking with us, something of which our children 
have scarce a glimmer. 

49 



OUR TOWN 

My old grandmother said to me one day: *' Ah, 
they don't have the good times in religion that 
they used to have." It's a good joke, that about 
water not being as wet as it once was, but there 
are times when it just doesn't seem to come in 
quite right. Somehow it made me sigh as I be- 
thought me of the protracted meetings I had been 
to when I was a little fellow — you went with me, 
don't you recollect? It might not have been in 
the same meeting-house, or the same town, or 
the same State, or the same year, and yet it was, 
too. It was in the old meeting-house " back 
home," and the time was just the same, '* when 
we were little." And then I bethought me of a 
modern revival meeting I had attended but a 
short time before. When I compared the two, it 
seemed to me I understood how it was that 
the world to-day, so bright and active, scuttling 
across the landscape under the hissing trolley-wire, 
and glowing with the golden radiance and the 
violet splendor of electric lamps, should seem to 
the older ones a dull, gray world, no longer in- 
teresting, because no longer Interested in what they 

50 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

deemed a far more vital matter than heaping to- 
gether that which perishes with the using. 

The protracted meeting I attended lately 
wasn't in a meeting-house, but in a church, a splen- 
did structure, through whose pictured windows 
the sunlight shines on Sunday mornings. Cush- 
ioned pews semicircle on a slanting floor. Above 
the preacher's rostrum is a gallery with a valance, 
behind which, during the sermon, hide the four 
hired singers whose well-trained voices blend so 
smoothly. 

The modern revival that I attended was not 
held in this spacious auditorium, but in a smaller 
basement room, where, I think, they hold the 
" donkey parties " and the " socials." Even this 
room was plenty large. No utter stranger came 
and threw his arms around my neck and asked 
me to go up to the mourners' bench. There was 
no mourners' bench. There was a row of or- 
chestra chairs, whereat some knelt. Seemingly 
kneeling is not clean gone out of fashion. They 
kneeled, backs to the pulpit, in the good old way. 
I felt a little more at home when I saw that. But 

51 



OUR TOWN 

still I missed the '* workers " with the roving, 
piercing eyes, which fell upon the conscious-smit- 
ten and made them blanch and cower. And I 
missed the band of saints and new-rejoicing, 
thronged about the altar, singing, praying, encour- 
aging, pointing the way to those who still sought 
assurance of their sins forgiven. No two began 
to lead In prayer or raise the tune at the same 
time. Nobody did anything till he was called 
upon. Nobody interjected heartening " Amens '* 
or *' Hallelujahs." Nobody sobbed or groaned 
aloud in the extremity of his grief; nobody shouted 
or clapped his hands in his joy unspeakable and 
full of glory. It was very calm, very sedate, 
almost repressed. It was still even in the back 
seats by the door. They were empty. I won- 
dered If I had missed my directions. The only 
sign outside the church door was an undertaker's 
sign. It seemed ominous. 

What I missed most of all was the old-time 
hearty singing. Perhaps that was mere bawling, 
and a little off the key. No matter. It was 
alive. I missed the old-time, sturdy, manly tunes, 

52 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

that came out of a live man's heart, worthy of 
the noble words that voiced the loftiest aspiration 
of the human soul, seeking after God, if haply 
it might find Him. Instead there were the fee- 
blest possible, soppy, sentimental little verses, set 
to the feeblest little sentimental tunes — I could 
make better out of putty — and invariably ac- 
companied on the piano. On the piano! It 
needed only that ! 

" Ah ! they don't have the good times in re- 
ligion that they used to." You remember those 
good times, don't you? In the old meeting-house 
back home, when we were little, where they had 
a reed-organ, if they had any; where they had a 
volunteer choir, if they had any, that rose to 
" Cast Up the Highway " on festival occasions, 
like the annual conference, where Brother John 
Snodgrass led the singing with his down, left, 
rigb^ up, and his f a-so-la-mi-f a ; or, maybe, it 
wa ' "r Jim.my Carhart, who despised organs, 

anv often as he dared, broke out with: 

" Let's have some singin', now, without the mu- 
sic," meaning for Minnie De Wees to sit still 

53 



OUR TOWN 

there on the organ stool and look as if she could 
bite nails; in the old meeting-house back home, 
where, when we were little, everybody turned 
around and kneeled flat on the bare floor, face to 
the back of the bench, to pray, and followed every 
word of the petition with moving lips, groaning 
aloud with the intensity of supplication, or cheer- 
ing the one who " led " with loud-resounding cries 
of: '' Yes, Lord! " '' Lord grant! " " A-a-a- 
a-men!" *' Hallelujah! " "Glory to God!" 
"Praise His Name!"; where nearly everybody 
stayed to class-meeting, which to Brother F. P. 
Morgan was the best thing in religion, and at 
which old Uncle Billy Nicholson used always to 
begin his testimony with: "Feller sinners an' 
dyin friends-ah. It's been forty years, down In 
Hanks's schoolhouse, sence God, for Christ's sake, 
spoke peace to m' soul," and always ended with: 
" Pray for me, brothers and sisters, that I may 
always prove faithful and finally meet you all in 
heaven, where we shall strike glad hands, where 
parting is no more." 

There was some little talk then about a man 

54 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

named Darwin that had some crazy notion or 
other about monkeys turning into men, and a light- 
headed fellow named Tyndall, or some such name, 
that had the audacity to propose that an experi- 
ment be tried of all the world praying for the 
patients in one ward of a hospital and not pray- 
ing for the patients in another ward, and see which 
set of sick folks got well first, but no serious 
attention was paid to his wanderings. The 
Higher Criticism had not been heard of then, 
and if at the annual conference some one preached 
a sermon mentioning Renan and Strauss, why, 
everybody knew how godless a Frenchman like 
Renan must be, and the only known Strauss was 
he that kept the One Price Clothing Store. 

In those days the bending heavens came down. 
God walked with men. He was very near, al- 
most like one of the neighbors. He was a kind 
and loving Father, but He was a father and 
spared not the rod. He was a jealous God, and 
when a mother idolized her child too much. He 
took it from her to show her where to set her af- 
fections. His arm was not shortened in those 

55 



OUR TOWN 

days, and many were the signal instances of an- 
swers to the prayer of faith. 

In those days, the protracted meeting was no 
timid, half-way thing. Its immediate beginnings 
we were too little to know, you and I. It was 
not — and then suddenly it was. There was 
snow on the ground, we remember, but whether 
the protracted meeting began with the Week of 
Prayer, or whether the shortening days had some- 
thing to do with it, who shall say? The shorten- 
ing days were favorable, for then all the crops 
were in, and all the corn was husked, and to feed 
the stock and to dawdle over some few chores, to 
sleep and eat was all there was to do, week in, 
week out. The lengthening nights were favor- 
able, wherein one read with difficulty, and all there 
was to read was " Dr. Chase's Receipt Book," 
and the " Works of Flavius Josephus," and the 
" Autobiography of Hester Ann Rogers," and 
Nelson's " Cause and Cure of Infidelity." The 
soul had time for introspection. Then the pro- 
tracted meeting came along. Children could stay 
up till all hours, half past nine and even ten — 

56 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

yes, even later still, if they " went forward." 
There was meeting six nights of the week — Sat- 
urday the preacher had to have to himself so as 
to think up what to say on Sunday morning. 
Seven sermons a week he preached, besides " ex- 
horting." 

The first part of a protracted meeting was just 
like any other, singing and praying and reading 
out of the Bible and preaching. They had the 
organ for the hymns, and the prayers were not 
especially exciting, but the sermons were a little 
out of the common. Part of one still clings to 
my memory. There were four D's in it. One 
was Dreadful, one was Dismal, one was Doomed, 
and, I won't be sure, but I think the fourth D was 
Devilish. Nothing about birds and flowers and 
sunset glow. But thrilling as this was, we waited 
with eager anticipation for what was to come 
after, when the organ should be silent, and re- 
straint laid off, as one lays off a garment. The 
sermon ended with fearful warnings to hardened 
impenitents; with joyful hopes to such as forsook 
their evil ways; with stirring appeals to every 

57 



OUR TOWN 

spark of one's better nature; with mention of the 
prayers of mothers clinging to the knees of God 
and beseeching Him to be mindful of their way- 
ward sons. "Won't you come? Won't you 
come? " 

And then broke out forthwith that hymn which 
seems to me instinct with all the heart's devotion : 

" I am coming, Lord, 
Coming now to thee; 
Wash me, cleanse me in the blood, 
That flowed on Calvary." 

Or It might be that the hymn was older and 
went back to the heroic age of American history, 
to the days of coonskin hats and apple-cuttings 
and log huts and " fever and ager," to days when 
they really did have '' good times in religion." 
It might have been a tune that Peter Cartwright 
sung, or Russell Bigelow, or Elijah Hedding, or 
any of the preachers that studied at " Brush Col- 
lege " and rode Circuit. Perhaps It was: 

" Come, humble sinner, in whose breast, 
A thousand thoughts revolve, 

58 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

Come with your guilt and fear oppressed, 
And make this last resolve: — 

"I'll go to Jesus, though my sin 
Like mountains round me close; 
I know His courts; I'll enter in 
Whatever may oppose." 

No tinkling, feeble, soppy sentimentality about 
that. 

After this hymn, the true meeting begins. All 
that was before was the mere preface, endured 
for the sake of what Is now to come. Look with, 
all your eyes; listen with all your ears. As the 
hymn rises, the workers disperse themselves 
throughout the congregation and toward the back 
of the house. The rearmost bench of all is the 
seat of the scornful, the boys with long white 
crooked hairs sparse upon their chins, with Adam's 
apples that bob up and down on their throats; 
boys with quacking voices; boys that can chew to- 
bacco without breaking out all over In a cold sweat; 
boys that have graduated beyond " Gosh ! " and 
" Jeemses Rivers! " and are now clumsily trying 
other expletives, not without a vague fear of being 

59 



OUR TOWN 

struck by lightning. They're all smart boys. 
Nobody could possibly know as much as they do. 
You couldn't fool them, betch life. You couldn't 
get around them none, and tole 'em up to no 
mourners' bench. They know too much. And 
just to show the real manly spirit and spunk they 
have, all the time the preacher is telling about 
this place of the four D's, they are scuffling with 
each other in their hobbledehoy way, pinching, 
tickling, and cackling with laughter. Afraid? 
No, sirree. Bob ! Neither is the man afraid that 
whistles going through the graveyard after dark. 
But just the same they sit close together, for 
there is something, they don't know what, that 
draws them to these meetings, something that 
fascinates, something they are afeared of because 
it is not of earth. If they were separated one 
from the other, they know that it would get them. 
Wait but a little and you shall see it. What? 
Can it be seen? Can one see the wind that shakes 
the wheat field? 

" Sing some more ! " commands Sister Becken- 
baugh, from the pew-end of the seat of the scorn- 

60 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

ful, where she Is arguing with that wild and 
reckless boy of hers. He looks down sheepishly, 
steals a glance at the others, a grin ready on his 
face, should he find one on theirs. They are 
quite grave, for in our day it didn't do to be dis- 
respectful to other boys' mas. He listens to her. 
He doesn't " sass," or call her an old fool here, 
as he does at home. He just holds out stub- 
bornly, sure of applause when she has given up 
and gone away. 

*' Sing some more!" (Sister Beckenbaugh is 
of those who hold that music is meant only to be 
a background for conversation.) 

She argues, she pleads, she threatens with the 
four D's. All over the meeting-house this is go- 
ing on. You stretch your neck this way and that 
to see what's happening, and all of a sudden you 
jump as If you were shot to find somebody's hand 
upon your shoulder. 

"Brother, are you a Christian?" 
" Well, no, sir, not exactly." 
" Don't you think you'd ought to be?" 
You snicker foolishly: "Th-n-nnnn!" and 

6i 



OUR TOWN 

look down. The sweat comes on the back of 
your neck. 

" You mean to be one some day, don't you? " 

" Well, yes. Some day. Not now.'* 

"Why not now?" 

He looks you In the eye. " Why not now? " 
Something within you, not yourself, that makes 
for righteousness, echoes the question: "Why 
not now? " Are the things whereof your con- 
science doth accuse you — are your darling sins so 
great a comfort to you that you must cling to them 
a little longer? The man looks at you with 
earnest eyes. You cannot stand his steady gaze. 
You hang your head and fiddle with the pew-back. 

" Why not now? What do you gain by wait- 
ing?" 

" Well, I won't go now. Not to-night," and 
you smile a feeble, foolish smile. Inside of you 
something Is saying: "Yes. Go on. Go on. 
Now's the time." But you hold back. What 
holds you back? I wonder. 

" To-morrow may be too late. There may be 
no to-morrow. God may require your soul of 

62 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

you this very night. How will it be with you if 
you reject Him? " 

Ah! He has missed his opportunity. If he 
had just kept on with "Why not now?" you 
would have yielded, but that you should die now, 
or at any other time, is too absurd. " A thou- 
sand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy 
right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." 

" Think about this, my brother," he says, and 
lays his hand again upon you. His eyes leave 
you and wander to another, though he still talks 
to you. (Will he never have done?) At last 
he goes, and you draw a long breath, and look 
around with a faint smile for some one's approval 
of your manly course. If there is a Something 
not of earth that draws one to a better life, what 
is this other Something, also not of earth, that 
holds one back? Who of us but really wants to 
be a better man or woman? What Is it, then, 
that makes us mullshly balk against the gracious 
leading? It is a mystery to us now; it was no 
mystery to us then. We knew right well It was 
the Old Boy in us, as big as an alligator. 

63 



OUR TOWN 

The singing is ended. From the altar comes 
the command: " Brother Snyder, lead us in 
prayer/' 

• Brother Snyder is gifted that way. He begins 
slowly and with impressive dignity: ''High! 
Holy! Almighty! Everlasting God! we come 
before Thee this evening," etc. Then, as the 
formal address and introduction conclude, he be- 
comes more eloquent, more impassioned. His 
voice falls into the old-time swing, almost a chant, 
and the vocal recoil after each period or phrase 
becomes more audible: " They's sinners here to- 
night-ah," he cantillates, " that's a-haltin' betwix' 
two opinions-ah. They's sinners here to-night-ah 
that's a-swingin' to and fro-ah, like a do-o-o-o-or 
on its hinges-ah. WAKE 'EM UP-ah ! WAKE 
'EM UP, OL-o-o-rd-ah!" 

"Amen, a-a-a-amen!" cries the enthusiastic 
and tumultuous chorus. 

" Let 'em feel, O Lord-ah, the awful peril they 
are in-ah, like men a-walkin' in a fog-ah on the 
brink of a terrible clift-ah. WAKE UP these 
sinners-ah and show 'em, O Lord-ah, where they 

64 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

are at-ah! Hang 'em over HELL FIRE-ah, for 
a spell-ah. Give 'em a good strong whiff o' brim- 
stone-ah! Let 'em have no peace from this time 
forth untell they find it in Thee-ah. Let not the 
prayers of godly fathers, the tears and groans of 
praying mothers-ah, go unanswered any longer. 
Strike — deep — conviction into their hearts, O 
Lord-ah!" 

With every petition rises a louder and mtDre 
tumultuous chorus of cheering and encouraging 
approbation until the prayer is ended. While 
they still kneel, some one starts up a hymn. It 
may be that touching one of John Wesley's : 

" Take my poor heart and let it be 
Forever closed to all but thee, 
Seal thou my breast and let me wear 
That pledge of love forever there." 

Again they pray, and then they rise and sing. 
The emotions, the sympathies are stirred to their 
profoundest depths by this thrilling oratory, by 
the regular, recurring accent of the hymn, by some- 
thing else more mysterious, more profound, some- 
thing that thrills by anticipation. Only a few are 

6s 



OUR TOWN 

at the altar now, but there is something in the air, 
as it were the Spirit of God brooding over the 
face of the waters. The workers redouble their 
appeals. The hymns beat more lustily. Two or 
three are praying at once. No matter for that. 
It's coming. It's coming. Pretty soon you will 
see them flock as doves to their windows. 

" I am coming, Lord, 
Coming now to thee. 
Wash me, cleanse me in the blood 
That flowed on Calvary. 



Nay, but I yield, I yield, 
I can hold out no more, 

I sink by dying love compelled 
And own thee conqueror. 



" I am coming, Lord — — " 

'' Bless God, there's one coming I Bless God! 
Hallelujah to the Lamb I " 

" That flowed on Calvary." 

" Isn't there another? Isn't there another that 
will declare : ' I care not for what others may 

66 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

do or say, but as for me and my house, we will 
serve the Lord?* Isn't there another? God 
bless you, my brother ! " 
And as the hymn repeats : 

" I am coming, Lord," 

the eager eyes of the watchers note a young man 
trembling, moving uneasily where he stands, look- 
ing down, passing a shaking hand over his face. 
He starts forward, but stops. You can see him 
swallow hard. Then, suddenly breaking as if by 
force from some unseen grip, he almost runs for- 
ward to the mourners' bench, stumbling, blinded 
by his tears, sobbing, as he casts himself down: 
" God be merciful to me a sinner! " 

And there's another. And there's another. 
And yonder's another. The hymn swells with 
enthusiasm, almost with holy laughter. Why are 
you not among those? A subtle uneasiness over- 
spreads you. Not to-night. Some other time. 
(The Old Boy snickers behind his hand.) 
There's another going forward. Two more. 

Away with modern tunes. Let's get back to 

67 



OUR TOWN 

the ones they used to have when they had good 
times In religion. Brother Miller starts up: 

" Sing on, pray on, we're a-gainin' ground, 
Glory, hallelujah! 
The power of the Lord is a-comin' down, 
Glory, hallelujah!" 

"That's it! that's It! Sing It again. Isn't 
there one more? We are going to pray pretty 
soon now again. We are going tp pray for these 
penitent souls, that they may know that their sins, 
which were many, are all forgiven. Who else 
will come ? Ah, here is one for whom many have 
been praying. Right here, kneel right down 
here." Ah, this Is good times in religion! 

" Glory to the Lamb ! 
Glory to the Lamb! 
Glory to the Lamb! 
The world is overcome, 
Glory to the Lamb ! " 

And when you hear that tune, know that, then 
and there, there are good times In religion, and 
that the mysterious influence is abroad. Nobody 

68 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

ever made that tune. Nobody composed that on 

any parlor organ. It came. V^eird, mysterious, 

almost formless, unlike any other earthly tune, 

something of that which lies Behind the Veil is 

in it. The ecstasy of the Beatific Vision pervades 
it. 

*' And I shall overcome, 
Glory to the Lamb! 
Glory to the Lamb ! " 

How many saintly souls, now gone to glory, 
have hymned that aspiration! How many re- 
deemed and blood-washed! It is *' some sweet 
fragment of the songs above." It is some broken 
echo of the melody chanted by the white-robed 
multitude around the crystal sea, the multitude 
which no man can number, harping ceaselessly on 
golden harps. 

Tumult now follows; one leading in prayer, 
as if to take the kingdom of heaven by storm, 
two or three at once following him In just as 
fervent supplication, while the faithful pray al- 
most as loudly to themselves, or groan in earnest- 
ness, or shout enthusiastic approval of petitions, 

69 



OUR TOWN 

amid the confused murmur of the workers about 
them, teaching the mourners to pray, pointing them 
to that Cross whereon He suffered once for all, 
and for all men. Let us a little withdraw 
ourselves and ask: What mean ye by this 
service? 

For the first time In all his life this young man, 
now agonizing at the mourners' bench, feels to 
the full how he has slighted God, how often he 
has rejected tendered mercy. Perhaps It Is too 
late now. There Is a sin for which there is no 
pardon, let him cry never so loudly and weep 
never so bitterly. What this sin may be Is merci- 
fully hidden from us, but it is surmised It Is re- 
sisting the influences of the Spirit. He has done 
that how often ! Is that Dark, that Dismal, that 
Doomed, and Devilish Pit to be his habitation for 
all eternity, while overhead the company of the 
blessed chant everlastingly, all forgetful of his 
misery? Is he never to see again the sweet face 
of that praying mother of his, whose last whis- 
pered word to him was: " Meet me . . .*' and 
who then, when she could not finish out the sen- 

70 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

tence, looked upward to tell him where? Lost I 
Lost! Forever lost! 

Some one kneels beside him and whispers to 
him the comfortable words: " God so loved the 
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever — whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting 
life." Whosoever . . . Whosoever? Why . . . 
Why — . . . Why, that's me! Can it be that 
there is pardon for such a guilty wretch as I am? 
Hark! They are singing: 

" Depth of mercy ! Can there be 
Mercy still reserved for me? 
Can my God His wrath forbear — 
Me, the chief of sinners, spare? 
God is love, I know, I feel, 
Jesus weeps, and loves me still, 
Jesus weeps, He weeps, and loves me still." 

And all of a sudden there comes that joy that 
cannot be told of in words. Sorrow and heavi- 
ness flee away. The burden falls off. That 
Dark, that Dismal Place no longer menaces. 
Saved! Saved from a never-ending Hell! Oh, 

71 



OUR TOWN 

glory to the kind, forgiving God! Glory! You 
saw this young man a little while ago, trembling, 
hesitating, torn by conflicting fears. You saw 
him agonizing on his knees. Look at him now. 
He starts up, his hands clenched, his eyes closed, 
a rapt expression on his face that shines as if by 
inward light. "Glory!" he shouts, ^' Glory /'^ 
louder still, my brother, "GLORY!" Every 
muscle quivers with tension. He cannot shout 
louder, but joy must be expressed in some way. 
He beats his palms together with the intensity 
of rapture. The others embrace him. Oh, the 
happiness of that moment! He bursts into the 
holy laugh. Others get their souls on fire. 
Others " come through " and join him in rejoic- 
ing in a new-found Saviour. Those who are al- 
ready saved feel their hearts warm, and they, too, 
get to shouting and " striking glad hands," and, 
casting off the fear of what the world may say or 
think, " have good times in religion." 

Sometimes they swooned away in ecstasy. I 
saw a girl lie thus for hours together, supine, her 
arms wide-spread. Her face was flushed and 

72 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

she breathed hard. A few stood about her, but 
they did nothing to revive her. It was all right. 
It occasioned no surprise, for in the earlier days 
there were such blessed trances in which favored 
ones had seen what lies Behind the Veil; had 
shuddered at the Dismal, Doomed, Dreadful, 
and Devilish Pit; had caught a glimpse of daz- 
zling glories and heard " sweet fragments of the 
songs above " ere the pearly gates swung shut 
again, and they descended all unwillingly to the 
dull earth once more, but knowing thereafter what 
joys awaited there, what radiancy of glory, what 
bliss beyond compare. I was eager to know if to 
this young woman was vouchsafed any such boon, 
but I could get no word whatever. It seems to 
me now that they put me off. Boys were used to 
that In those days. 

In such exuberance of enthusiasm, when, as it 
were, the soul runs wild and naked in its innocency, 
so many things occur to twitch the corners of the 
mouth, that the *' holy laugh " would have had to 
be invented if It did not exist. 

They tell the story of a man who went up for- 

73 



OUR TOWN 

ward night after alght, night after night through 
all the meetings. The last night found him still 
seeking. No one could make much out of him, 
but at this last meeting some one put his arms 
about him and pityingly said: " What's the mat- 
ter, my dear brother? Why is It you can't come 
through? " 

The consciousness that the harvest was passed 
and the summer ended, the kindly sympathy — 
something, anyway — broke the man's heart. 
*' Oh, I'm converted all right, all right, 
I guess," he sniffled, and then he broke Into a reg- 
ular, square-mouthed bawling spell. " Bub-but 
. . . ah-hoo-hoo-hoooooo I I jist caint make a 
prayer fit fer a daw-aw-awg! " 

It Is of record that among the Puritans of old 
New England were very wonderful and gracious 
conversions at six years, at four years, and even at 
two years and seven months. Nevertheless I 
seem to remember that there was some grumbling 
when Sister Moots and Sister Hoover made such 
a strenuous campaign among the little folks in 
Sunday-school. Sister Boggs, who taught the In- 

74 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

fant class, was quite outspoken against such do- 
ings. 

'' What do them little things know about sins 
forgive, and all such truck as that?" she angrily 
demanded. (Righteous anger, understand.) 
" Don't it say that their angels do always behold 
the face of the Father? Well, then. And what 
if they are naughty? Bless their bones, I 
wouldn't give two pins for a young one that 
didn't tear up Jack once in a while. No, I 
wouldn't. Why, lawsadaisy! What have they 
got to repent of? Trackin' in mud an' chasin' 
the chickens and such capers. Worst they ever 
did ud be all right if you'd turn 'em up and smack 
'em, and kind o' loosen their hides so's they'd 
grow good. Well, s'posin'. S'posin' they was 
to die in their sins. What. of It? They'd go to 
heaven, right spang! Oh, hush up ! I don't 
want to hear any more talk about it." 

But Sister Moots and Sister Hoover persevered, 
and I'll never be able to tell you just how a whole 
pewful of these young seekers looked one time 
when Brother Snyder got good and going about 

IS 



OUR TOWN 

the "sinners here to-nlght-ah, a-haltin' betwix' 
two opinions-ah, and a-swingin' to an' fro-ah, like 
a do-o-o-o-or on its hinges-ah." They were weep- 
ing and wailing for their wicked sins, for they were 
in danger of hell-fire, every one of them having 
many times said to his brother: " Thou fool! " 
Each had a wet and wadded handkerchief and 
was scrubbing away industriously. They heard, 
without heeding, Brother Snyder's long-drawn can- 
tillation, but when he came to: "WAKE 'EM 
UP-ah! Hang these sinners over HELL-FIRE 
a spell-ah! Give 'em a good strong WHIFF 
of brimstone-ah ! " if you could have seen that 
row of round and red-rimmed eyes pop up from 
behind the pew-back with such a " What's-up- 
now? " expression, you would have felt the urgent 
need of the holy laugh yourself. 

Just before the close of the meeting the mourn- 
ers sit up, and they and others give in their " ex- 
perience." The older ones know what to say 
from having been often at love-feast and prayer- 
meeting when " the meeting is now in your 
hands." But, it being their first essay as public 

76 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

speakers with the little folks, they sit and study, 
furtively watching their turn draw fearfully nearer 
and nearer. Still sobbing and holding their hand- 
kerchiefs before their eyes, they hunch their neigh- 
bor with: "Hay! How's this? *I am trying 
to serve the Lord/ 'LI that do, d'ye reckon?" 
The first quarterly meeting after the revival, 
who can forget it? For the first time in his life 
the boy stays through the entire service. The 
solemn words are spoken. The strange and sub- 
tle fragrance of the sacramental wine distils upon 
the quiet air. The railful waits the words of 
dismissal, the short address concluding with these 
words: " Rise, brethren. Go in peace, and live 
for Him who died for you." As another railful 
presses forward is sung a verse of " There is a 
Fountain Filled with Blood " to that sweet tune 
built on the five-toned scale that touches the heart 
so with its repetition of the words: 

" And there may I, though vile as he, 
Lose all my guilty stains." 

It is solemn, sacramental, ritualistic, definitely pre- 

77 



OUR TOWN 

scribed; It is the antipodes of the free, untram- 
meled expression of the emotions; It is the priestly 
contrasted with the prophetic. 

But in the love-feast In the afternoon, after the 
prefatory little blocks of bread and sups of water, 
the prophetic once more resumes Its sway. It is 
the sacrament of the lay people. They rise to 
tell of what the Lord has done for them : here the 
young soldier just admitted on probation, at the 
end of whose words, spoken with quivering chin, 
is sung: " I've 'listed in the holy war," and 
yonder the old veteran, soon to enter into his 
eternal possessions, for whom is sung: 

" My days are gliding swiftly by, 

And I, a pilgrim stranger, 
Would not detain them as they fly, 

Those hours of toil and danger. 
For oh, we stand on Jordan's strand, 

Our friends are passing over. 
And just before the shining shore 

We may almost discover." 

Ah, they had good times in religion in those 
days, so it seemed to us. But in the Amen Corner 

78 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

there were those who shook their heads and 
sighed, recalling what it was like in their day. 
When their folks moved here from Clark 
County, one time Pap was gone to the mill and 
wouldn't be back for three days, it was such a far 
ways in those days, and Mother was left alone 
with two little ones, and she could hear the wolves 
" hollering " in the woods over by where Mc- 
Kinnon's is now, and there was just a quilt hung 
up for a door to the cabin. When they had love- 
feast then -a woman couldn't get into it if she had 
a flower or a ribbon in her bonnet, and men didn't 
find peace to their souls till they had ripped from 
their shirt-bosoms the ruffles they were so proud of. 
No one then dreamed of asking if one might not 
take a hand at cards, or read a novel, go to a 
dance or to the playhouse, and still be a " pro- 
fessor." Then they generally fasted once a week 
and always fasted the Friday before quarterly 
meeting. They had good times in religion then, 
but even that was nothing to what they had heard 
Pap and Mother tell about in the days when 
Daniel Boone and Lewis Wetzel and Captain 

79 



OUR TOWN 

Crawford and Simon Kenton and sinister Simon 
GIrty, the renegade, were not mere names of 
demigods, but neighbors and acquaintances. In 
that heroic age, what was in our degenerate days 
a midwinter luxury, was common fare. 

At every preaching then " the slain of the Lord " 
fell in windrows to the ground, struck down by 
mighty power. Then men, under conviction, 
wandered in solitary places, moaning and crying, 
''Lost! Lost! Forever lost!" Then the 
shouts of the redeemed and blood-washed could 
be heard for miles as they went spinning round the 
camp-ground like a top. Mysterious and inex- 
plicable " exercises " attended the preaching of 
the Word. Saplings had to be cut off at the right 
height to give those affected by the " jerks " some- 
thing to hold on by while, from the waist upward, 
they flung themselves back and forth with such 
uncontrollable violence that the women's bonnets 
and combs flew every which way, and their long, 
loosened locks cracked like a carter's whip. 
Around these saplings the ground was all torn 
up as if It had been a hitching-post In fly-time. 

80 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

Men taken with the " barking exercise " would 
run on all fours, yelping and howling, and crying 
that they had the devil " treed." The old men 
dreamed dreams and the young men saw visions; 
sons and daughters prophesied, and children seven 
and eight years old preached to sinners and con- 
verted many, exhorting until they collapsed from 
sheer fatigue. The end of the world was thought 
to be at hand, for these were the signs of the last 
days. 

And in truth the end of the world they knew 
was at hand, and these were the last days of their 
age. The new age was struggling to be born, a 
new age grander far than any that had ever been 
before — than all that had ever been before. A 
new nation founded, not upon authority, but upon 
the Equal Rights of Man, had come into being 
on this side of the Atlantic. On the farther side 
what change was being wrought in their day we 
may know from the fact that the flag of this Amer- 
ican nation is now the oldest one that floats. 

A waft of air stirs just before the dawn of day. 
It was so then. Men drew in their breath and 

8i 



OUR TOWN 

their bosoms swelled with lofty purpose to do 
something for their fellows, something to hasten 
on the dawning of the day. A thousand Instances 
show this, none more heart-touching than that of 
Johnny '* Appleseed." It was not much that he 
could do to help along, but at least he could 
bring apple seeds from far across the mountains 
and sow them in the dark forests of Ohio. He 
could lend, leaf by leaf, his books to the soul- 
hungry backwoodsmen. The heavens be his bed 
for that! 

Never before did such a Macedonian cry go up 
as from these pioneers. They had battled with 
appalling hardships to win them homes in the far 
wilderness. There grew up fathers of families 
who had never heard a sermon or a prayer of- 
fered to God. To them came the circuit-riders, not 
aged men, as we are wont to picture them, but 
almost beardless youths, filled with a youth's god- 
like fervency of spirit. Within them the thirst 
for souls raged like a fever. Thousands of miles 
they rode each year, sleeping where night over- 
took them, sometimes in the lone woods, sometimes 

82 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

in vermin-ridden cabins, preaching four times each 
day, and oftener if they could. Their nominal 
stipend was $64 a year and find themselves; their 
real income never touched that figure. It was 
for no earthly recompense they wrought, but for 
an amaranthine crown. What pay could tempt 
a fever-stricken man to lie for weeks upon three 
chairs in a crowded cabin? That was a common 
experience with them. Starved out sometimes, 
they " located " till they could get new clothing 
and a fresh horse, and then — Once more into 
the field! Most of them died young, many of 
them among strangers; and not for years after- 
ward did their relatives hear how, when they were 
too weak even to sit up in bed, they yet gathered 
the people round them and told them of the Cross 
and Him that hung thereon. V^ith them it was 
no mere pious aspiration, but their heart's desire 
and prayer to God: 

" Happy if with my latest breath 
I may but gasp his name; 
Preach Him to all, and cry in death: 
'Behold! Behold the Lamb!'" 

B3 



OUR TOWN 

Never before was there such a spreading of the 
Gospel. The aureoled saints that converted 
Europe were but a feeble folk beside them, 
slow-motioned, temporizing. They were un- 
learned men, these circuit-riders. As one of 
them has said, they " murdered the king's Eng- 
lish at every lick," but they had power given unto 
them to move the hearts of men, such power as 
we can only estimate by first reading the accounts 
of camp-meetings In the *' airly days," and then 
going to a modern one, thinly attended and only 
by the very old, at that, and deadly with a dulness 
that no brass quartet, or hired singers of religious 
ballads, or frequent jingling of tawdry " gospel 
hymns " can lighten in the least degree. In the 
old days whole settlements were utterly deserted 
to attend camp-meeting, and if the rowdies came 
and brought their whisky-bottles and made dis- 
turbances, that also was good times In religion. 
A mighty power could smite them senseless to the 
ground, if not the preacher's fist on *' the burr of 
the ear," as Peter Cartwrlght calls It. (Says he: 
*' I did not permit myself to believe that any man 

84 



THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 

could whip me till it was tried.") But the mighty 
power could always be depended on, and if " the 
slain of the Lord " did not keel over by the hun- 
dred under his preaching, the circuit-rider exam- 
ined his heart to find out why. 

It needs must be that the age thus ushered in 
should be the grandest that the world has ever 
seen. These were the Voices of the Wilderness 
crying: *' Prepare ye the way of the Lord." 
And like their prototype, the man of Jordan, 
plain-spoken and uncouth as they, there came a 
time when they saw with sadness that they must de- 
crease, and what they had forerun must increase. 
Peter Cartwright prayed: "Lord, save the 
Church from desiring to have pews, choirs, organs, 
or instrumental music and a congregational min- 
istry, like the heathen churches round about! " 
And, even as he prayed, he must have seen that 
the prayer was foreordained never to be an- 
swered. Something of desperation was in his 
cry: " The educated ministry, the settled pastor- 
ate, has been tried time and again, and every 
time has proved to be a perfect failure." It was 

85 



OUR TOWN 

the bitter anger of a man that clearly foresees de- 
feat that made him scorn the theological semi- 
naries as " preacher factories," and compare their 
finished products to so many " goslings that have 
got the straddles from wading In the dew." 

And yet, if he could come back to earth, not as 
he left It, a weary, worn-out man, but as when, a 
mere stripling, he heard a voice from heaven call- 
ing, "Peter I Look up!" if he could return to 
us, nineteen years old again, with all the godlike 
fervency of youth, and all the good, hard com- 
mon sense that was his, he would be none of those 
who shake their heads and " deplore the tendency 
of the age," as if God were an old man now, no 
longer knowing His own business! These have 
been twaddling their tinkling little " gospel 
hymns " so long that they have forgotten the 
sturdy lines that stayed and comforted so many 
In the days when they had good times In religion : 

" We'll praise Him for all that is past, 
And trust Him for all that's to come." 



86 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

WHAT was the first real " the-ay-ter " 
play you ever went to? 
I can hear you say " 0-o-o-oh. 
. . ." in a long-drawn sigh. I can 
see you close your eyes, and a faint smile come 
over your face, as you recall that night. It is 
the first time you have thought of it in many a 
day. Wasn't it just gra-and? 

I suppose that when they come to our age, the 
children of this day and generation will hardly 
be able to remember with as much distinctness 
their first real play. They see so many of them; 
so much is done for them that it wasn't thought 
well to do for us, and they live in a world at all 
points so widely different from that of ours " back 
home." And even so, that world was somewhat 
emancipated as compared with the one in which 
Grandpap lived when he was young. In those 
days Grandpap was a fine, strong, husky fellow 

89 



OUR TOWN 

(so other people have told me; he never said 
much about it himself), and took great delight In 
wrestling. But he got to thinking it over, and 




Took delight in wrestling. 



the upshot was that he stopped wrestling, right 
square off. He applied the moral touchstone 
of his day: If a thing is good fun, then it is 
wicked. I mind the first time Grandpap ate a 

90 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

dish of ice-cream. It tasted so good he knew it 
must be bad for the health. So he went and took 
a pill to counteract the evil. 

In his young days all that people could do — 
nice people, I mean, not the rough element — was 
to attend to business, farming or shoemaking or 
housekeeping or whatever; and to try to be good 
men and women. What kind of a life is that? 
When folks don't do anything foolish, but just 
attend to business and try to be good — why, 
they might as well be dead. That's the way I 
look at it. The rough element might go to 
dances, might play euchre and seven-up; might 
read novels; might fiddle; might go to horse-races 
and the playhouse; might wear gold and silver 
and costly apparel, such as gold collar-buttons, 
and neckties, and artificial flowers, and ruffles, 
and ribbons and beads, and all such dew-dabs ; but 
not nice people, not people that wanted to be 
somebody. And here's a funny thing: In spite 
of the fact that the girls wore no ruffles and beads 
and ribbons and artificial flowers, but went around 
in plain straight skirts and slat sunbonnets, they 

91 



OUR TOWN 

all got married. Some of them, two or three 
times. Now, how do you account for that? 

This thing of being sensible and good went well 
enough while everybody lived in log cabins, but 




They had to buy melodeons and 
pianos. 

after the War was over, and the men that had 
been sleeping out of doors for four years and 
living a pretty strenuous life came home and be- 
gan to put the same energy into business that they 
had put into fighting, things began to hum. The 
country went ahead like a scared rabbit. People 

92 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

made money so fast that they had to put some of 
it on their backs. They had to buy melodeons 
and pianos. Now, pretty nearly the first thing 
you learn when you take music lessons is the 
" Sack Waltz." As a natural consequence, when- 
ever you'd find half a dozen girls together, one of 
them would have her skirts drawn up to her shoe- 
tops, so the others could see how she moved her 
feet, and she'd be counting, '' One, two, three, 
One, two, three." It wasn't long before they 
got in a real organ, and a paid choir, and stained- 
glass windows, and a carpet on the floor. I 
shouldn't wonder if even the U. P's had organs 
now in the meeting-houses. 

Well, you know what all that leads to. You 
might stave it off a little while, you might titivate 
yourself with lectures on '' Does Death End All? " 
by the Rev. Joseph Cook, but you had to own up 
that you liked John B. Gough a lot better. He 
— er — er — (Out with it!) — Well, he kind o' 
acted it out more. Now, take the " Swiss Bell- 
ringers," for example. The music was lovely and 
elevating to the mind, and all like that, but the 

93 



OUR TOWN 

fellow that was, with them — what was his name, 
now? Sol. Smith Russell. That's the man — 
He was a heap more interesting. He acted it out. 
And then, about that time along came a lecturer 
on " Richard Brinsley Sheridan." Sheridan was 
a man that wrote plays, yes, I know, but don't 




Jtr^^^. 



Now, take the Swiss> Bell-ringers. 



you see? It was English Literature the man was 
lecturing about, and it was merely incidental that 
he should tell about the characters. Bob Acres, and 
Sir Lucius O^ Trigger, and the rest. He did it 
very well, and you could tell right away which 
was which character, but it kind of made you wish 
that . . . that . . . 

94 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

Just about that time, too, the elocution teacher 
came to our town. A lot of people learned from 
him how to talk like a dry cistern. I won't be 
sure, but I think he was the first to start the fash- 
ion of saying " i-ther " and '' thurfore," two pro- 
nunciations which confer distinction upon any 
discourse, I think even more so than " dlsremem- 
ber." (There was something so dressed up about 
*' disremember." So much more refined than 
^' ferglt.") You remember the elocution teacher, 
and his plug hat, and his ginger-colored whiskers 
dyed a crape black up to within an eighth of an 
Inch of the roots. You remember his explosives 
and effusives, his gutturals and pectorals, his oro- 
tunds and orals, his "Ho! Ha! Hee! 
Hoo ! " his wavlngs and weavlngs of hands, " from 
the shoulder always; never from the elbows." 
You remember his : 

" Rrrrrrr-owj^ h-ye Ro-MUNS? H-rrrrrr- 
ouse ye sul-LAVES ! " his: 

" Hn-thy liver loves-zh, CUR-few SHALLLL 
LL//11 not ha-rrrrringngng to NIGHTTTT-t!" 
and his: 

97 



OUR TOWN 

" Hea-ea-ear the sledgeeswiththeirbellllllls, 
SEE-eelver belllUlls!" 

Quite a few in our town took lessons from him. 
The worst of it was that a body could never get 
a chance to practise. The girl that took piano 




The fellow that played the '' tooby 
could go down to the barn. 

lessons might clatter and boom up and down 
the scale in contrary motion from breakfast till 
bedtime, and nobody noticed it; the fellow that 
played the " tooby " in the band could take the 
lantern and go down to the barn and snort by the 
hour " Poomp ! Poomp ! Poom-poom-poom- 
poomp ! " and nobody made fun of him. But let 

98 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

an elocution student start in with '* Ho ! Ha 1 
Hee! Hoo!" and Pap would fling down his 
Examiner with " Aw, let up on that! " and if you 
persevered, he would bawl out, " Give that calf 
more room I " There'd be a crowd out on the 




Has to keep one ear 
hung out for the rat- 
tle of a wagon. 



front sidewalk in no time, mocking you, and mak- 
ing that sound with their soft palates, a kind of 
snoring laugh which is so chilling to the artistic 
temperament. If he goes out to the woods pas- 
ture to practice, he has to keep one ear hung out, 
even in his intensest moments, for the rattle of a 

99 



OUR TOWN 

wagon jingling down the big road, carrying a 
worthy but wholly inartistic couple or this will 
ensue : 

"Whoa! Ho, there! Stand still, can't ye? 
. . . Mother, did you hear that? They're killin' 
somebuddy In yan ! " 

"Why, Pap!" 

" Yes, sir, they are. Why, jls listen to him 
holler. My Lord! Oh, I can't stand this." 

" Now, Pap — " 

" Don't hang onto me thataway. Leggo." 

" Now, Pap, now don't ye go fer to git mixed 
up in no muss 'at don't concern you, runnin' head- 
long Into danger like that. Now, Pap! An' a 
mortgage on the farm, smf! an' me left all, all 
alone In the world with four little helpless, Inno- 
cent children, ahoo! an' the milk o' five cows to 
'tend to — Aw, now. Pap ! " 

" Mother, It ain't human for me to drive apast 
and leave that pore bein' to his fate. Now. It 
won't do, I tell you, to wait till we git to the 
Squire's. It'll be too late then. Whoa, Fan! 
Whoa, girl! You set right still and keep a-holt 

100 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

o' them lines. I'll be right back. LET THE 
MAN ALONE ! " 

He crashes through the hazel-brush with the 
noise of a yoke of oxen, while his poor wife sits 
perched up there, sniffling and " all of a trimble," 




He crashes through the 
hazel-brush. 

till he comes back, mad as a hornet and red in the 
face. 

" Aw, just some fool in there speakin' a piece ! 
Go on. Fan! Ck! Ck! Half a cent I'd 'a' 
broke his neck for him. D-tarn . . . fool ! " 

But while " Kentucky Belle " and " Lasca " and 

lOI 



OUR TOWN 

" The Polish Boy " were exciting and all that, 
something was lacking. There wasn't any dressing 
up; there wasn't any painting your face; there 
wasn't any curtain to go up and come down (which 
is perhaps the most important of all, since a cur- 
tain means mystery, and charm, and magic). But 
there was missing, too, the reckless deviltry, the 
risk of something which I will not further hint 
at than to say that these blue-tipped matches put 
you in mind of it, the state of mind associated 
with euchre in the haymow, and novels. 

Ah, the first novel ! I don't mean " Antelope 
Abe," but the first hound novel. In vain you 
argued with your mother that George Eliot's 
Works were entirely fit and proper reading for 
the young. She took the book and turned over 
to the title page and pointed her accusing finger at 
the black and shameless words, " Adam Bede, a 
Novel." She had you there. You might pro- 
test. " Oh, well, it ain't a dime novel." It was 
" A Novel " just the same, and there her finger 
stayed. Something sank within you. You might 
talk and talk, but you could not evade the fact. 

102 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

You could not but stare where the finger pointed. 
You, yoii were reading novels. False, false to the 
vows you had made! Knowing the good and 
choosing the evil. This was not your first step 
downward. Before this, you had borrowed from 




You heard what Brother Longenecker 
said about that. 



a neighbor Shakspere's Plays. You heard what 
Brother Longenecker said about that only last 
Sunday. He said, " Shakspere is the Devil's 
Bible ! " And you had borrowed that book, bor- 
rowed it, when you had Butler's " Analogy of 
Revealed Religion," Nelson's " Cause and Cure 
of Infidelity," " The Autobiography of Hester 

103 



OUR TOWN 

Ann Rogers," and other good books about the 
house, scarcely opened. Scarcely opened. What 
did you suppose was going to become of you if 
you kept on like that? The next thing, you'd be 
wanting to go to the the-ay-ter. And something 
within you thrilled in answer, although you 
knew then and know now that the word, es- 
pecially when pronounced with the accent on 
the second syllable, connotes, as no other 
word in our language does, hardened impenitence 
that can look reproach in the eye and say, " Well, 
what of it?" 

That is why we have so few theaters in this 
country and so many Opera-Houses. So much 
of conscience is left to us yet, that though we may 
do the deed, we dare not speak the word. Hence 
such conversations as: 

" Goin' to the Opry-House to-night? " 

" Why, I hadn't thought. What is it? " 

" Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

Perhaps it was not all your fault that the Old 
Boy leaped up in you at the bare mention of the 
the-ay-ter. The dialogues at the Sunday-school 

104 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

exhibitions might have fostered in you the wish to 
see and hear character impersonated. The min- 
strel show your daddy took you to, not long after 
your curls were cut off, first showed you the luxury 




Goin to the Opry-House to- 
night f " 

of the sight of others' miseries (when they art* 
feigned). It was in the old Melodeon Hall. 
That was before Judge Rodehaver built the Opry- 
House. All the comedy went by you, and you 
wondered and wondered what the folks were 

105 



OUR TOWN 

laughing at. But the afterpiece you understood. 
It showed how It would be away, 'way off in the 
future, In 1909, when the colored folks, so lately 
freed, would have the upper hand and would then 
give the white folks a taste of their own medicine. 
A lot of nig — Sh ! How many times have I 
got to speak to you about that word? It's very 
low, and rude. Only Democrats say that — A 
lot of colored gentlemen were having a fine dinner, 
when In comes a poor white man all wrapped up 
In a quilt, his cold pink legs showing underneath. 
He begged them for something to eat. He 
couldn't have it. 

*' What did you eat last? " 

" I had a peanut last week." 

Aw, the poor man ! You felt so sorry for him. 
And just when you were wishing they would tell 
him to draw up and eat himself done, Bang ! went 
a cannon or a pistol or something, and the curtain 
came down, shutting off the colored gentlemen, 
and the man threw off his quilt, and there he was 
all in pink tights and spangles, and dancing to 
the music. And coming home, your father ex- 

106 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

plained to you that the man was only pretending. 
He wasn't really hungry. 

And then the pammer-ammer of " The Pil- 
grim's Progress " gave you an inkling of 
scenic effect. ^' Pilgrim's Progress " is (or 
was) a boys' book all full of fighting and ad- 
ventures. It only had a few black and white 
pictures in it. The pammer-ammer was a 
whole, whole lot of colored pictures, big ones 
that they rolled past whenever the man 
clapped his hands. And maybe Apollyon wasn't 
a fierce-looking critter, all green and scaly, and 
an arrow-headed stinger on the end of his tail! 
But It was the effects that interested you. For in- 
stance, when Christian first started out, it came 
up to storm, and they turned down the gas, and 
the piano went whanga, whanga, whanga on the 
bass notes, just exactly like thunder. And then 
Christian meets Evangelist and asks the way, and 
Evangelist says, *' Do you see yonder shining 
light? " and Christian says, " I think I do." 
Well, I should think so too, for there was a hole 
cut in the canvas, and just then somebody put a 

107 



OUR TOWN 

light behind It, so that you couldn't help but see it. 
There were a lot of those things, but the best of 
all was the Grand Transformation Scene at the 
last. Christian and Hopeful swum the River of 
Death. It seemed as if they swum standing up 
and kind of cow-fashion, but we didn't mind that, 
we were so interested in seeing how the story came 
out. And sure enough, they got to Heaven. In 
the next scene there they were, being pulled up 
by a wire, and two angels, also on wires, came in 
from the sides, blowing on horns. And there was 
the Celestial City, all gold and white, splendid, 
if a little skimpy. "» 

And here's something they had in our town that 
I don't think they had in yours. Just as Christian 
and Hopeful started to wabble upward, a painted 
scene-cloth all blazing at the edges swung across 
the opening. The lecturer gave a kind of jump, 
but kept right on talking, and pretty soon he 
bowed and smiled, and the curtain came down, 
and the piano started up a grand march, and the 
people put on their things and sauntered out talk- 
ing about how lovely it all was, and how much 

io8 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN^ 

better they understood it now than they ever had 
before. Apparently it never crossed their minds 
— it certainly did not cross mine — that possibly 
the blazing scene-cloth might not have been down 
on the program as a scenic effect; that while the 
lecturer was bowing and smiling he was scared 
half to death, and if the piano had played a shade 
less loudly, I might have heard them behind 
scampering here and there for buckets of water, 
and stamping out the blazing canvas. So far as 
I know, never a word got out that would make 
people understand how near they came to being 
burned alive or trampled to death that night. 

And speaking of fire makes me think of red 
fire and the entertainment they got up for Center 
Street M. E. when they were going to build the 
new church. It ran for three nights. They 
called it '' Tableaux Vivants." When I say 
" they," I mean the bills, for the people just 
skipped those words. That is, all of them did 
except those folks who always make fun of every- 
thing stylish. They said, " Tab-lokes Vi-vance ! 
What in tunket is tab-lokes vi-vance? " In case 

109 



OUR TOWN 

you don't know what these words mean, Til ex- 
plain that it's where you get folks to dress up and 
stand just so and not move, and then you pull the 
curtain up, and when they can't stand it any longer 
without breathing, you let the curtain down, and 
you burn red fire so's the light will shine on them. 
The reason why you mustn't breathe is, that if 
you do, the smoke of the red fire will make you 
cough. I don't know whether, when you saw 
these . . . er . . . these what-you-may-callums, 
they had what they had the night I went. The 
program said: "Poses Statuesques — Ajax De- 
fying the Lightnings — Cain Killing Abel — The 
Dying Gladiator." Well, sir, when the curtain 
went up, there stood a man without anything on 
but a suit of union underwear, no pants or shirt 
or anything but just this white suit of underclothes, 
looked like it was all in one piece, and his face 
was all white, and he had kind of cotton-batting 
hair, and he looked for all the world like a marble 
statue, like that one on the Clayton Monument 
down at the cemetery, only that is a marble angel 
with a nightgown on, and kind of holes cut in the 

no 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

back to let the wings go through, though how they 
get the feathers through without rumpling them all 
up, I never could see. This man I'm telling you 
about was a fine-looking young man and very well- 
built but — Well, what's your opinion? Do you 




To set a good exam- 
ple to the youngf 

think such a thing is calculated to set a good ex- 
ample to the young? There was a good deal of 
talk about it at the time, I remember, especially 
among the old stick-in-the-muds up in the Amen 
corner, and I heard that old Aunt Betty Mooney 
went so far as to threaten to take out her letter. 
She said such goings-on were perfectly scandalous, 

III 



OUR TOWN 

and If that was the way they were going to do, 
she just wouldn't stand it. Now! 

But there could be no possible complaint as 
to the last thing on the program. When the cur- 
tain went up, there were potted palms on the stage, 
and a rubber plant tied with a red ribbon. That 
was to show It was In the tropics somewhere. 
Then a lot of the Company K fellows marched in 
with their guns, only they wore red-and-yellow 
uniforms and carried a flag that made you think 
of a horse-blanket. It was yellow and had two 
narrow red stripes, one at each end, like a horse- 
blanket. And there was a man led out with his 
hands tied behind him and a handkerchief over 
his eyes. Then we knew what It was. It was 
down In Cuba that time they were going to shoot 
a revolutionist. The captain said: " Read-ay- 
ay! Aim!" and just as he was going to say: 
" Fire," and the women started to put their fin- 
gers In their ears, here came Abel Horn — Oh, 
sure, he was in It. He was in everything — here 
came Abel Horn and threw the American flag over 
the man as much as to say: " You just dare! " 

112 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

And while the captain was studying whether he'd 
better or not, down dropped what they call a 
" tar-po-le-on " that they had hung up at the back 
of the stage, and there stood Jenny Snodgrass 
with her hair let down, and a kind of a skating- 
cap on her head, and a big shield that came up so 
she could rest her hand on it, and all dressed up 
in the American Flag, low-neck-and-short-sleeves 
and a trail, or would have been a trail if she 
hadn't been standing on a white box, kind of. 
Well, sir, that just settled it. They dassent to 
shoot the man then, and they lighted the red fire, 
and the piano started to play, " O, say, can you 
see," and the people clapped and stomped like 
everything. But I tell you it was a mighty near 
thing for that fellow with his hands tied. Little 
more, and he'd have been a goner. It was bully. 
Coming home with George Donnyhew that 
night, I said as much. Now, George was a boy 
that had been around a good deal. He had been 
down to Columbus twice, and I think he had been 
as far as Circleville. " Aw, that ain't nothin'," 
says he. " You ought to see a real the-ay-ter 

113 



OUR TOWN 

play once." At that moment Satan entered into 
me. I fought against the entrance. I knew how 
wicked it was to think of such things, let alone 
going to them. But I also knew (rejoicing and 
despairing In spirit at once), that a day would 




Aw, that aint nothin/' 
says he. 

come when I should be among those who sat and 
saw the Devil's Bible acted out on a stage by peo- 
ple painted up and dressed up to look the way 
they did in those days. I knew, too, that very 
likely I should sink so low as to attend a " variety 
show," and that, as you know, scrapes on the bot- 
tom, for the ladies wear short skirts and kick up 

114 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

their heels, as bold as brass. It all came true, I 
regret to say. But I shall also have to tell you 
that even in a " variety show " I never saw any 
'' Poses Statuesques," In union underwear. 

In another place I have written about William 
B. Bradbury and the great work he did for this 
country's musical development by his composition 
of sacred songs, whose bass was invariably do, 
sol, and fa, so that any young man who learned 
those three tones of the scale could join in without 
having to sing " air.'* Bradbury did something 
which contributed more to the dissipation of the 
old fogy notion that we are here to attend to 
business and try to be good, than any other one 
thing. He composed " Esther, The Beautiful 
Queen." It was all about Esther, and Mordecai, 
and the Israelites, and that rapscallion of a 
Hainan. Being from the Bible, it took the peo- 
ple off their guard, don't you see? Musically, the 
work compares favorably with '' Work for the 
Night is Coming," and '' Shall We Gather at the 
River?" and that is a great convenience in the 
matter of amateur productions. And you can 

115 



OUR TOWN 

make the costumes out of cheesecloth, blue and red 
and yellow, and all such ; and it's great fun getting 
it up, and taking the girls home after the re- 
hearsals, and there are more solos for more dif- 
ferent people than you can shake a stick at; and 
there are no end of chances to work in all the 
nice-looking little boys and girls in town as pages 
and train-bearers, and so all the fathers and moth- 
ers, and brothers and sisters, and husbands and 
wives, and uncles and aunts and cousins, to the 
fifth remove, and relations of every degree, and 
friends and acquaintances of everybody that 
" takes part " all buy tickets, and the Opry-House 
is chock-a-block for the three nights. It could run 
longer, but everybody in it is just played out with 
excitement and can't stand any more. There is 
acting in it, and scenery, and costumes, and you 
paint your face, and the curtain goes up, and all 
like that, but it isn't a the-ay-ter. Not at all. 

It's all singing. So it can't be a the-ay-ter. 

Well, if it's acting and costumes, and the cur- 
tain goes up and down, and it's all singing, it must 
be an opera. 

Ii6 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

No. It's about the Bible, so it can't be an 
opera. 

Well, what is it, then? 

It's a cantata. Something entirely different 
from an opera or a play. 

Right here I must confess my entire unfitness 
to write on this subject. I supposeT am the only 
man in the United States of America, able to sing 
the scale in C, who not only has never taken part 
in " Esther, The Beautiful Queen," but who has 
never even witnessed a performance of that great 
work. I never had the chance. I suppose I 
ought to feel proud of the distinction, but I'm not. 
It makes me feel lonesome. You saw it, and I 
didn't. You were in it, and I wasn't. I'll bet 
that at times you find yourself whistling that about: 
'* Ever the dutiful more than the beautiful," and, 
" I'll go unto the King, though not according to 
the Law." Oh, well, that's the way of it in this 
world. Some have everything nice, and some 
don't have anything but trouble. 

But I saw " The Drummer-boy of Shiloh," just 
the same as you did. Laura Hornbaker, who had 

117 



OUR TOWN 

been Esther, was the girl that Mose Coogler 
wanted to get, and that Johnny Durfee got. Mose 
was afterward Prosecuting Attorney, you remem- 
ber. He played the part of the Rebel Colonel, 
and was In command of AndersonvUle, and who 
should turn up among the Union prisoners but 
Johnny Durfee that got engaged to Laura before 
the War broke out. She mittened Mose because 
he talked so against the Old Flag. Harry Det- 
wUer that played the Dutch Recruit wasn't In the 
prison scene at all because he was such an awful cut- 
up you couldn't help laughing at him, and this scene 
wasn't intended to be a bit funny. The Company 
K boys were all in rags, and chalked up to look pale 
and starved to death. In walks Mose Coogler 
with a bucket, and they all clamor for something 
to eat, and he scatters wet sawdust like it was 
chicken feed. They made out it was cornmeal. 
And the boys grabbled for it with their hands like 
they were crazy to get It, and pretended to eat it. 
(Oh, it made you wild to see 'em.) Johnny Dur- 
fee was supposed to be too sick to be able to get 
his share (he had such pretty black eyes and mus- 

Ii8 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

tache!). So Little Jimmy, the Drummer-boy of 
Shiloh, who was supposed to be the brother of 
Johnny Durfee (young Loosh Benson played the 
part) , he up and asks Mose for something for his 
poor sick brother. That was Mose's chance to 
get even with Johnny for cutting him out with 
Laura. So he roars out; "No, you Yankee 
dogs ! No-o ! Right here in this prison pen you 
shall rot, starve, and die!'' (Oo-oo! You 
ought to have heard the people grit their teeth 
at that.) So Loosh he throws himself at Mose's 
feet and begs and pleads with him. But Mose 
was a coward as well as a villain, and he shot the 
poor boy dead. That is, he did on the nights when 
the blame thing would go off. Sometimes it 
wouldn't, and young Loosh would have to stagger 
and fall and struggle and die just the same as if 
he had been shot. Heart failure, you know. 
Abel Horn was in that, too, and after Johnny 
Durfee said: " My G — ! Little Jimmy dead? 
This will kill poor mother! " iVbel had a speech 
like this: " Comrades, unknown to you all I have 
kept concealed next to my heart — " But wait 

119 



OUR TOWN 

till I tell you. One night he forgot to put the 
folded-up flag inside his shirt-bosom, so when he 
came to feel for it there, he didn't find it. — " Next 
to my heart," says he, hunting wildly, and reach- 
ing way down. — " Next to my heart " — (then he 
whispered: *' Where is it? Quick, you fel- 
lows!") — "Next to my heart — next to my — 
my heart" — Abel was getting rattled. Finally 
he fished it out of his pistol pocket where he had 
thoughtlessly stowed it. — " Next to my heart the 
dear Old Flag. Let us spread it over Little 
Jimmy for Little Jimmy is dead." 

Now you might say that was a the-ay-ter. It 
was a regular play, costumes and everything, and 
all spoken except in the last act where Laura sings 
" There will be one Vacant Chair," with that kind 
of a tremble in her voice that she got right after 
she began to take vocal of old Prof. Minetti who 
plays the organ in St. Bridget's Church. Yes, 
but don't you see, these were our boys, the Com- 
pany K boys, and we wanted to help 'em along. 
It wasn't like upholding regular actors, trapesing 
around the country, too lazy to make a living in an 

I20 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

honest way. And besides, it was about the War, 
and that's the next thing to a Bible story. Peo- 
ple went to see it and laughed till they got to 
coughing at Harry Detwiler trying to make his 
blanket cover both his head and toes at once when 
his stuffed stomach made the blanket too short, — 
people that would no more have gone to a regular 
the-ay-ter than they would have walked into 
Oesterle's and ordered a glass of that mixture of 
yeast and quinine that Oesterle called beer. 

All this time, whenever they threw show-bills' 
over into your front yard, you studied them till 
you almost knew them by heart. They were 
these long narrow bills that they don't have any 
more. Now and again there would be a picture 
on one of them of people with their hands clasped 
in agony while they saw somebody running a 
butcher-knife into somebody else. How you did 
wish you knew the story of it, and how it all came 
out ! But it was wicked to go, and it cost money. 
But one day the man that papered your house, who 
was also a bill-poster, left a complimentary ticket 
for you. He said he didn't care much for that 

121 



OUR TOWN 

kind of a show, but he thought maybe you would. 
Would you? Aw-haw-haw-aw-aw I Would youl 
Would a duck swim? Could you? That was 
the question. Well — er — er — seeing that It 
said " Complimentary " on it, why, it would be 




One day the man that papered your 
house left a ticket for you, 

kind of ill-mannered not to go. Oh, goody! 
Goo — But — er — er — ' How about your get- 
ting home? Because It would be pretty late at 
night. Oh, you'd come right home as soon as It 
was out. Yes, mam. You wouldn't loiter? No'm. 
Well — er — er — Wouldn't you be afraid to be 

122 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

alone on the street so late at night? Ah, afraid! 
You afraid! What of, for pity's sakes? Well, 
you know you always said the covered bridge was 
so spooky after dark. Oh, well! That was a 
good while ago. That was along last spring when 
you were littler. And besides, there would be 




You were in the front row. 

people coming home from the the-ay — from the 
entertainment, and you could come along with 
them. What time did it begin? " Doors open 
at 7:30. Performance begins promptly at 8." 

The doors did open at 7 130, didn't they? You 
were there and saw 'em open. In those days there 
weren't any reserved seats, no boxes, or orchestra 

123 



OUR TOWN 

seats, or " parkay," or balcony, or even gallery. 
There was just the flat floor of the Opry-House, 
and rows of wooden chairs nailed to scantlings. 
First come, first served, and you were in the front 
row, so close that you could just see over the edge 
of what the janitor called " de flat-fawm." You 
stared at the drop curtain with its view of Swiss 
scenery tastefully bordered with painted advices 
like: " Go to J. P. Runkle's for your Hardw're, 
Stoves and Tinw're "; " Highest Prices for Coun- 
try Produce at Rouse & Walker's Grocery Store, 
Main St. opp. P. O." 

Dinny Lynch's orchestra must have been play- 
ing for a dance that night somewhere, so the 
" troupe " engaged the nig — the colored band 
from the South End, and whenever they got to 
going, the windows of the hall would bulge out- 
ward, and little flakes of whitewash floated down 
on you from the ceiling. That helped to pass 
the time a little, though if anybody asks you if 
you have any notion of how long a thousand years 
is, you can tell *em, Yes, you have. It's just 
about as long as from 7 130 till 8, the first time 

124 




'^ 
e 

ttq 



o 
Co 



o 

hi 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

you ever saw a real the-ay-ter play. But you en- 
joyed yourself in anticipation — until you heard 
something that made your heart sink within you. 
Right back of you sat two farmers, come into 
town to *' set " on the Grand Jury. One of them 




To be continued in our next.' 



said to the other: " Tell you what, I jist bet you 
anything 'at when it gets along to the excitin' part, 
they'll come out an' say, ' To be continued in our 
next,' like they do in them weekly paper stories." 
Gosh all fish-hooks ! If they did that ! And your 
" Complimentary " was for one night only. 
Even a thousand years will pass if you wait 

127 



OUR TOWN 

long enough, and finally the curtain did go up, and 
there on a green sofa sat the Lady of Lyons with 
a bunch of hat-trimmings in her hand, saying: 
" I cannot think who it is sends me these beautiful 
flowers every day." Got you interested right 
from the word go. And she had such pretty rosy 
cheeks! And wasn't Claude Melnotte perfectly 
elegant? And that Mossoo Bo-se-ong, I just de- 
spised that man, didn't you? Think of him draw- 
ing a revolver on a lady! That's no way to act. 
And then, when he got left after all, and he says: 
" K-hairses on ye both! " that old fellow (I can't 
think of his name now), he jumps up and cracks 
his heels, and he says to him: "Curse away! 
But remember that curses are like chickens and 
always come home to roost." And that's just 
about so, too. 

So far from the story being " continued in our 
next," it was completed that night, and more also, 
for they had another one, a short one, about a 
lady that took in roomers, and she rented out the 
same room to two men, one that worked nights, 
and the other days. They didn't know she did 

128 



THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

that, but they suspicloned something was wrong, 
and finally, one day, the man that worked days 
got laid off or something, and came home unex- 
pected, and here was this other fellow in his room. 
Well, sir, if they didn't have it hot and heavy 
there for a while ! 

Don't you remember? Sure, you do. Well, 
maybe it wasn't " The Lady of Lyons." Maybe 
it was '' East Lynne," or " The Marble Heart," 
or Maggie Mitchell in " Fanchon the Cricket," 
or even " Uncle Tom's Cabin." No matter. It 
was the most entrancing thing that ever was. 
George Donnyhew was right when he said of the 
tableaux vivants: "Aw, that ain't nothin'. You 
want to see a real the-ay-ter play." 

Let me see, now — How long was it after that 
before you said to yourself, " I could do as well 
as that"? And when was it you began to sub- 
scribe for a theatrical paper and read with eager 
interest the news-notes from Ishpeming and Canal 
Winchester, like '' Giddy Girls comb. i6 to fair 
house. Leap for Life co. 21 failed to show^ up 
and house dark. Next wk. Sharon's U. T. C. co. 

129 



OUR TOWN 

28-29"? How you pondered on "WANTED 

— AT ONCE. For Bigelow Bros'. Refined 
Wagon Show, leading juvenile. Must be neat 
dresser and double in brass, willing to eat and 
sleep on lot. We PAY, not promise. Mashers 
and boozers, first offense, BingI Address Bige- 
low Bros., Jefferson Center, Shelby County, Ind." 
You came very near writing to them, didn't you? 
" Wait a while," says you to yourself. You have 
been waiting ever since. The birthdays have 
come and come, each one a little swifter-footed 
than its predecessor, each one exhaling a faint 
sigh, as it found you less likely to do what you had 
dreamed so vividly of doing — er — (Whisper) 

— going on the stage. You could do as good as 
some of them. You could do it better now than 
ever; could put more intelligence into it, more 
feeling, but — (Whisper again) — you're bigger 
around the waist. 

Wouldn't you like to see again that first real 
the-ay-ter play of yours, if you could see it with 
the same eager interest, if once again you could 
sit there tranced, your lips moving as the actors 

130 










o 

Vj 






THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 

spoke their lines? Wouldn't you like to see 
" The Drummer-boy of Shiloh " once more if you 
could laugh at Harry Detwiler's fooling and 
grit your teeth at Mose Coogler's villainy? 
Wouldn't you like to take the girls home from the 
rehearsal of " Esther," singing, through the quiet 
streets, '' Go thou unto the King " ? I think I'd 
like to see the pammerammer of " The Pilgrim's 
Progress " again if I could also see a resemblance 
in the tremolando of the bass notes of the piano 
to the rolling thunder, and if I were right sure 
they would have ''Poses Statuesque — Ajax De- 
fying the Lightnings — Cain Killing Abel — The 
Dying Gladiator," and it was for the new Center 
Street M. E. I believe I'd buy a ticket to the 
" Tableaux Vivants," and go, even if the smoke of 
the red fire, " the incense of the scene," as Abel 
Horn called it, did make me cough. Alive yet? 
Yes, indeed. Abel's in the insurance business up 
in the northern part of the State somewhere. 
Alive? Well, I guess. Just married his third 
wife the other day. Who was this that was 
telling me? 

133 



THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 



THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 

GENTLE READER: Up to now you 
and I have walked along, in our jour- 
neyings back home, with our arms in- 
terlocked upon each other's shoulders, 
thicker than thieves. Whenever I have given my 
experience, and told my " tribbles and trialations," 
as Brother John Warnock said in class meeting 
one time, you have grinned all over your face and 
wagged your head and agreed: " Yes, sir, that's 
so. Now, that's jist the way it was." 

I don't know how it is with you, but I begin 
to feel kind of uneasy about that sort of thing. 
I'm so constituted that it's bad for my health 
to have folks agree with me all the time. It gets 
so monotonous. I don't see but what you and I 
will have to have a row. It's bound to come 
sometime and we might as well have it over and 
done with. And yet I shouldn't like it to be any- 
thing more than a boyish spat, like those we used 

137 



OUR TOWN 

to have coming home from school, when I'd black 
your eye and you'd send me in bawling to my ma, 
with my hand held like a cup under my nose, and 
the next morning when you passed my house you'd 
yodel for me the same as ever, and I'd snatch up 
my books and tear out of the house so as to walk 
with you. 

Let me see now — what Is there we can quarrel 
about? 

I might pick a fuss by calling you names. I 
might chant at you, 



or, 



"Moore! Moore! 
Rick-rlck-store ! " 

Fie, for shame! Fie, for shame! 
Everybody knows your name ! " 



But I don't know that your name is Moore, or, 
Indeed, what it is at all. 
I might tease you with 

" Black eye ! Black eye ! 
Turn around and tell a lie." 
or, 

" Blue-eyed beauty! 
Run home and do your mammy's duty!" 

138 



THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 

which Is a terrible Insult and Implies that you 
help your mother with the dishes, an aspersion 
which you would have to " take up " or be for- 
ever disgraced. But I don't know the color of 
your eyes. 

I might bristle up to you and say, " I kin lick 
you. You think you're smart." That isn't done, 
though, to pick a fuss, but to get acquainted, and 
we don't need an introduction. Gentle Reader. 
And, besides, it would be just like you to sniffle, 
''You lea' me be, now; you big stiff! Mai 
Ma-ma ! " and run home bawling. 

Let me see, now — isn't there something we 
can squabble about, just like boys, and be just as 
unreasonable and loyal to our side? Let me see 
— let me see — 

I have It — politics. 

And since I proposed the game It's my first 
choice of sides. I choose Republican. 

Hee ! Hee ! I've got the advantage of you 
from the very first. I've got something to holler 
at you, and you haven't anything to holler back 
at me. 

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" Sixteen rats! Sixteen cats! 
Sixteen dirty Democrats!" 

I knew that would grind you. Your side hasn't 
any poetry like that. Not smart enough. The 
nearest you ever came to it was a long time ago 
when you could say " 329 " to us, and we'd get 
fighting mad in a second. So many of these 
young whiffets don't know what that means that 
we'll have to explain to them. It seems that one 
time Congress voted to raise its own salary, and 
dated the raise far enough back so that each con- 
gressman would have $329 that he hadn't figured 
on. But it was such an unpopular move that a 
statesman, afterwards nominated for President, 
covered back his grab into the Treasury. The 
worst thing he could have done ! The very worst 
thing he could have done! Because (if you're 
a politician) when you get caught with the goods 
on, the thing to do is to make out that you are 
working in the best interests of the country, and 
stick it out that it was your plain duty to do that 
very thing. And for this statesman to run like 
a whitehead at the very first holler, and go put 

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the money back where he got it — oh, that was 
too mortifying! And your side was just mali- 
cious enough to see it and to take advantage of 
it. Bad little boys thought 329 was a new 
naughty word, and chalked it on the fences and 
on the sidewalks, to the horror and disgust of all. 
You saw it everywhere. Going home from 
church you'd see it, and if you were walking with 
a lady you'd have to say: "Oh, what a funny 
looking cloud that is ! " to divert her attention. It 
was everywhere. People who lived at No. 329 
Main Street had to petition the Common Council 
to change their house number to 3 27 A. They 
couldn't stand it. In the early part of the cam- 
paign it looked as if our candidate was going to 
be defeated, but after this 329 movement got good 
and going, the moral sentiment of the country 
was awakened and our candidate was triumphantly 
vindicated by being elected. He's dead now, and 
he's got a far finer monument than the ramshackle 
factory chimney made out of brickbats they put 
up for Lincoln. 

That was the only popular cry you ever got on 

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us, and It taught you a lesson, seemingly. It 
taught you your place. And when we shout at 
you 

"Sixteen rats! Sixteen cats! 
Sixteen dirty Democrats! " 

you take your medicine In silence, the same as 
Tom Lee did when we gathered outside his laun- 
dry and declared, " Chlnymen eat rats!" I al- 
ways associated the two cries. 

I suppose most people have an Uncle Jack, 
the same as I did. Uncle Jack's Christian name 
was not John. It was ... I kind of hate to 
tell you . . . His initials were A. J. . . . Well, 
I might as well out with It, I suppose. His 
name was Andrew Jackson, and they called him 
Jack for short. So — so you may guess what his 
politics were. There's black sheep in every fam- 
ily and It's no use trying to make out different. 
As you go through the world you learn to have 
more charity for others' failings, and you try to 
think It Isn't always their fault, even though It 
does make you hang your head a little. 

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It was to my Uncle Jack that I made my first 
political argument. I didn't realize what a sock- 
dolager it was until afterwards, when I heard my 
daddy telling it around and laughing about it and 
saying what a smart child I was for my age. If 
Uncle Jack hadn't been another Ephraim joined to 
idols, that argument should have set him to think- 
ing. 

I was just at that place in the First Reader 
where it says, *' See the fat pig. Can the pig run? 
No, the pig is too fat to run," and when Uncle 
Jack, who had come to town all dressed up, with 
a ribbon pinned on his coat, bade me sit on his 
short, round knee while he felt around in his 
pockets to see if he couldn't find a stick of red 
striped candy somewhere on him, I thought of 
how Uncle Jack would look if he should try to 
run, for he was what you would call " a fleshy 
man " if you picked your words, and " a pussy 
man " if you didn't. He made inquiry as to the 
progress of my education, and let on to be much 
surprised that I knew my letters. To prove it, 
I called off the big capitals printed on the strip 

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of muslin tacked on the bottom of the big flag 
hung across Main Street, from the window over 
Case's Drug and Book Store to the window above 
Mr. Mornlngred's New York One Price Clothing 
Store. 

*'And what does that spell?" I asked my 
Uncle Jack. 

" That spells ' Democratic County Conven- 
tion,' " answered my Uncle Jack, with a pride [ 
thought unseemly. 

" Yes, but what you got it on the Union flag 
for?" I demanded to know. *' Why ain't you 
got it on the Copperheads' flag? Ain't the Demo- 
crats Copperheads? " Uncle Jack got red as fire, 
but he said: *' We're all under the one flag, my 
boy. We all want to do what's best for our coun- 
try, whether we're Democrats or Republicans." 
When they come at you with talk like that, what 
can you say? When they get the quiver in their 
voices, I mean. I knew as well as I knew any- 
thing that Uncle Jack had been a Copperhead; 
that he believed that when the people of a State 
vote of their own free will and accord to come 

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into the Union, they have the same right to go 
out of it if they vote to do so of their own free 
will and accord; and you know that's not only 
nonsense — it's treason. 

Wait a minute. Say! You and I once came 
to blows about politics. Yes, you do too remem- 
ber it, if you'll just stop and think. It was when 
we were in Miss Munsell's room. There was a 
Democratic rally, and big Pat McManus was one 
of the marshals, with a sash on him and all. And 
he came riding past the school yard when we were 
out at recess, and we hooted at him that about 
rats and cats and Democrats; and just to show 
that we weren't all Black Republicans you hol- 
lered: '^ Hurrah for " (whoever it was that was 
running for President and Vice-President on the 
Democratic ticket — they didn't get elected, I 
know) , and quick as a flash I added, " And a rope 
to hang 'em ! " And quick as another flash you 
hauled off and hit me in the mouth, and I hit you 
on the head and knocked your cap off, and you 
hit me — no, that time it went right past my ear; 
never touched me — and I hit you in the face, and 

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the other boys came a-running and shouted, " A 
fight! A fight! " And I was whirhng my fists 
around each other Uke the real fighters do and 
studying where I'd paste you if I got a good 
chance, when Enos Barker came up and stopped 
It. I was kind of glad of It, for my lip was bleed- 
ing, and the blood was red just like it is when it 
comes out of an artery, but the other boys were 
plum disgusted at Eeny. He was an awful bossy 
boy, anyhow, and he was bigger than most of us, 
and he had just joined the church and was what 
they call "an influence for good." Why, look! 
If he caught you at it, he'd make you give back 
the marbles you had won, and he wouldn't even 
let you say " Gosh ! " You'd have to say '' Good- 
ness! " Last I heard of Eeny, he was running 
one of these county history enterprises. Say; but 
he did everlastingly soak those farmers up in 
Clark County! "All the traffic will bear!" 
was Eeny's motto. 

So he went and tattled on us to Miss Munsell, 
and she had us both up before her desk. She told 
us we mustn't fight over our " political prefer- 

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ences." (I remember that expression as plain as 
If It was only yesterday) , and said she would let 
us off this time, but the very next time — she 
wanted the whole school to pay attention — the 
very next time she caught anybody, it didn't make 
any difference who, quarreling over politics, why 
— she hoped a word to the wise would be suf- 
ficient. By golly! she was a terror when It came 
to whaling a boy. When she got done with him 
he was as ridgy as a wash-board. 

She had to say that because, theoretically at 
least, Democrats do have some rights, but I could 
see she was with me, heart and soul. The others 
were, too, and all but said, " Goody! Goody! " 
when I told how I had capped your sentiment 
with "And a rope to hang 'em!" So I went 
back to my seat with a swelling heart. My lip 
was swelling some too. 

That night there was a drunk man on the 
street. That's the kind of folks Democrats are! 
That's why the Democrats like to see it rain, for 
rain makes corn, and corn makes whisky and 
whisky makes Democrats. 

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Hear also what Horace Greeley saith: "All 
Democrats are not horse-thieves; but all horse- 
thieves are Democrats." (That was before he 
ran for President on the Democratic ticket.) I 
feel sorry for you fellows. Honest, I do. And 
I felt sorry for my Uncle Jack and troubled in 
spirit about him, because he was a nice man, and 
a good-living man, and a sweet singer, and could 
tell such beautiful, scary Indian stories, when I 
went out there to visit his boys, that when It came 
bedtime Aunt Caroline would have to hold my 
hand all the way upstairs. It was a shame he was 
a Democrat — a blame shame, so It was. He 
was no drunk man, neither was he a horse-thief, 
and It got me why he should want to associate, 
even politically, with such a crowd. 

They were a distinctly Inferior class of people, 
and always had bad luck. They had to get up 
that cheerful saying about rain, because whenever 
they had a rally or anything it almost always 
rained. Their sky-rockets weren't near so pretty 
as ours and didn't go half so high. 

And when they had the band It didn't blow as 

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loud for them as for us, or play such nice tunes. 
And you could see the band felt ashamed to have 
to turn out for Democrats, and always made a 
point of giving them " Columbia, the Gem of the 
Ocean," because in the first line of the second 
verse there is a distinct allusion to Democrats. 
You never thought of it? Why, it says as plain 
as anything: 

" The wine-cup, the wine-cup bring hither," 
and if that isn't hinting pretty strong I don't 
know what is. 

Their torchlight parades were regular fizzles. 
" About a hundred men and boys in line," the Ex- 
aminer said about them always. But our parades 
were fine. Sometimes there would be about a 
million in line. Well, of course, not quite as 
many as that, but pretty nearly though — pretty 
nearly. 

We'd be up on Richardson's steps on Main 
Street, where we could see 'way, 'way down to the 
South End. It would be all dark except for the 
coal-oil lamps in the windows of the stores and 
on the wooden posts at the street corners. Every 

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once in a while we'd stand on our tiptoes to see 
if they weren't coming yet, and the grown folks 
would give us an impatient shake and say, " No, 
child, not yet — not for a good while yet," and 
go on talking the inconsequential foolishness that 
grown folks will talk when they get together, 
about how old man Dietrich wasn't expected to 
live, and how they had telegraphed for Jinny and 
Ed, and all such stuff as that. And we'd gape 
till the tops of our heads seemed likely to come off, 
and mother would say, " I don't know what pos- 
sessed me to bring these young ones out. They 
ought to be in bed this minute. It's just the ru- 
ination of children to keep 'em up so late, but they 
teased so to come along that there wasn't any liv- 
ing with 'em, so they'll just have to prop their 
eyes open the best way they can," and we'd chirp 
up, " Oh, I ain't — hee-hy. Ho-hum ! — sleepy a 
bit," and try not to gape, or if we had to, we did 
it mannerly behind our hands. And pretty soon 
somebody would say, "Hark! what's that?" 
And away off somewhere you could hear: 
" Boomp ! — Boomp ! — Boomp-boomp-boomp ! 

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Boomp ! — Boomp ! — Boomp-Boomp-Boomp I " 
The bass-drum! (I always get excited when I 
hear the bass-drum. Something doing!) And it 
would keep getting a little louder and a little 
louder and a little louder; and we kept getting 
more and more excited, and just at the psycholog- 
ical moment the line turned into Main Street at 
Mad River Street, and the drums began to roll — 
" prrrrrrrr-rum-pum ! Boong! " and the solo 
cornet to go — " Tantara-tantara-TAH ! Teedle- 
eedle-TAH ! " That's the introduction, and that 
grand old patriotic air, " Marching Through 
Georgia,'* would set the pulses to leaping. 

It's strange, when you think of it, that of all the 
fine tunes made during the war-time that alone 
should have lived. I don't think it begins to be 
as pretty as: 

" Brave boys are they! 

Gone at their country's call! 
But yet, but yet, we can not forget 
That many brave boys must fall ! " 

And in lofty sentiment I don't think *' Marching 
Through Georgia " is quite up to " The Battle 

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Hymn of the Republic." But that's only a funny 
song nowadays about a man named John Brown, 
or some such name. The real patriotic air is 
" Marching Through Georgia." I once knew a 
man that was in the march to the sea. He 
brought home three gold watches from it. He 
always liked that tune a lot. 

Well as I was saying, around the corner came 
the rows on rows of sparkling lights, with all the 
sinuous, wavy motion of one of these woolly 
" Fever-'n-ager " caterpillars, moving up and 
down as the men kept step, and moving to this 
side and that as the men dodged the mud-puddles. 
Farther back in the line, where part of the time 
the men heard the music of the cornet band, and 
part of the time the music of the fife-and-drum 
corps there was a sort of joint (as we could see 
from Richardson's high steps) where the line of 
lights joggled and wabbled. Uncle Mose Strayer 
always had charge of the fife-and-drum corps un- 
til he got the rheumatism so bad that Aunt Becky 
wouldn't let him march through the wet any more. 
I reckon that man knew more nice tunes on the fife 

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than any other man before or since. He knew 
" The Irish Washerwoman," and " The Fisher's 
Hornpipe," and " Money Musk," and " Bona- 
parte Over the Rhine," and " St. Patrick Was a 
Gentleman," and '' The British Grenadiers," and 
" The Frozen Leg," and — oh, a whole, whole 
lot of tunes that would make your foot go in spite 
of itself. 

Summer nights, just at dusk, when it would 
be all still, you could hear him from far across 
the prairie. After he had done a lot of these 
*' quick and devilish " airs he'd stop, and we'd 
know, just as if we'd been there to see, that he had 
run the fife through his hands a couple of times 
and put it away, and gone and got his old Ger- 
man flute with the one brass C-sharp key and the 
finger-holes all worn white. And then he'd play 
this here soft, sweet music that makes your throat 
all swell up and hurt you, and you sit and wish 
for something, you don't know what. 

" Oh, father, dear father, come down. 
Come down and open the door." 

and 

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" Fly away to my native land, sweet bird, 
Fly away to my native land." 

He'd always wind up with the old familiar words : 

" Believe me if all those endearing young charms that I 
gaze on so fondly to-day," 

because that was Aunt Becky's favorite. The 
summer after she died he didn't play on his fife 
at all, but one evening we heard him with his 
flute awhile. He ran a scale or two on it and 
then he began, " Believe me if all those endearing 
young charms," but he didn't get very far with it. 
He stopped. We listened for him to go on, but 
he never did. As we waited I heard my mother 
draw a kind of a long breath and sigh it 
out. After a little my father said, as if she had 
asked him something, " Yes, he thought an awful 
lot of Aunt Becky." The old man didn't live a 
great while after that. 

I don't know why it is that I keep wandering 
from the subject so. Seems as if I couldn't stick 
to my text when I get to talking about the old 
times. You remember, though, that when the 

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whole long line of torches got into Main Street 
you wondered why it didn't make everything as 
bright as day. They must have had a thicker 
kind of darkness at night In those times. It 
soaked up more light! You wouldn't believe! 

It was only when they got right close to that 
you could see the tin cans of the torches wabbling 
In the crotches of the staves, and the red and 
white and blue oilcloth capes of the different com- 
panies: and only when they were right In front 
of Richardson's could you recognize the boys you 
knew walking along with their pas, holding hands 
with them, or else clinging to their cape-corners. 
Other boys' pas let them march; It was a funny 
thing you couldn't ever get to go. Mud up to 
your knees — nothing ! You'd look where you 
were going. 

But even If we could not march and go help 
our side win, we could cheer and wave our hand- 
kerchiefs and hope our side would win. It almost 
always did. It could all the time, but It got to 
be such a sure thing that sometimes the Republi- 
cans would say, " Oh, I guess I'll stay home and 

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clean out the furnace. They don't need my vote/' 
and that time the Democrats would win. They 
always voted. Sometimes they voted two or three 
times apiece, which is no fair. But that is a Dem- 
ocrat trick, and you've always got to be on the 
lookout for it. And if they won, why, there 
would be the dickens and all to pay. The weather 
would be so bad that the farmers wouldn't make 
more than half a crop; or else it would be so 
confoundedly good that they would raise too much, 
so that they couldn't get hardly anything for it. 
And there would always be hard times in business 
as soon as ever the Democrats got in. Sometimes 
the hard times would come just because the Demo- 
crats wanted to get in. The bare suspicion that 
there was the least show for them to elect any- 
body was enough to give commercial prosperity 
a hard chill and send it to bed with a hot brick 
to its feet. The Democratic legislatures and con- 
gresses would do the foolishest things. You'd 
read about it in the Examiner and wonder how 
people could be so foolish. And the mystery deep- 
ened that nice men like Uncle Jack could go right 

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along voting the Democratic ticket and upholding 
these fellows in trying to ruin the country. If 
they'd only stop taking their silly Democrat pa- 
pers and read the Examiner they'd see it. They 
couldn't help but see it. 

When we got older, so that we could sit up till 
nine o'clock, we went to the meetings in the Opry- 
house, where they explained all about it. It was 
a hardship to give up the splendid miles and miles 
of torches, and the funny transparencies, with 
their comical digs at the Democrats; but if we 
waited for all that the place would be full before 
we got there. One look at a Republican meeting 
and another look at a Democratic meeting should 
decide any fair-minded person which party he ought 
to belong to. At the Republican meeting, up on the 
stage where the table was, with the white pitcher 
of water and the glass tumbler, were the finest men 
in town. There was the President of the Na- 
tional Bank, who was dead down on the Green- 
back heresy. And old Judge Rodehaver would 
be right next to him. He is Probate Judge now. 
Before that he was County Clerk, and before that 

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he was County Auditor, and before that he was — 
well, I guess he's always been in what you might 
call " public life." A fine-looking man, with 
thick, white hair and a clean-shaven face and the 
appearance of a Roman senator. And the Post- 
master is there. He's a very able man they say. 
He knows better than anybody else in the county 
how to get out the vote. And Caleb Dyer is 
there. He is one of our leading citizens, having 
started from nothing, as you might say — an ex- 
ample to any ambitious young man who wants to 
rise in the world. He is a little, small, dried-up 
runt of a fellow with a gray goatee on his chin. 
He lives in the big fine house on North Main, 
the one with the cu-pa-lo on top of it. He owns 
a lot of property around town, and several farms, 
and every once in a while he gets another farm. 
What does he do? Why, he doesn't do anything. 
He's not that kind. He's a capitalist. He lends 
people money and takes a mortgage, and then 
when they can't pay up he gets the farm or what- 
ever they gave for security. He's very " s'rood 
in business," if you know what that means. 

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And there is Major Drew. He Isn't really a 
major, but they call him that because he was in 
the war and looks exactly like a military man of 
high rank, with his white mustaches and imperial, 
his erect and soldierly carriage, and his loud, brusk 
voice. When the enemies of our country fired 
on Sumter, he promptly responded to the call of 
duty. I don't know for sure what branch of the 
service he was In, but he was one of those gallant 
men they call sutlers. You ought to hear him 
make the Decoration Day Speech. He's grand. 
He owns the woolen mill, and when the hands 
tried to get up a union, so that they could strike 
and gouge more wages out of him, he mighty soon 
put a stop to It. There's where his military train- 
ing came in. No Insubordination In the ranks. 
It was his business and he proposed to run It In 
his own way and not be dictated to by anybody. 
Why, If he went and paid them more wages they 
wouldn't be satisfied. They'd want more pretty 
soon. And they'd only spend It In beer. And 
If he cut their hours down to ten, that would only 
be so much more time for them to loaf around 

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the street corners and pass remarks on the ladles 
that went by. When he was their age, before 
he got his start during the war, he worked fourteen 
and fifteen hours a day and thought nothing of it. 
And so would they, if they weren't so lazy and do- 
less. So he fired the ringleaders so quick it made 
their heads swim. That put a stop to their non- 
sense mighty sudden. 

The people that you saw at the Republican 
meetings were of the better class, don't you know. 
Nice people, white-handed people with clean col- 
lars and pearly finger-nails; employers of labor who 
gave the common folk jobs and thus kept life in 
their bodies; store-keepers; all who frowned upon 
the saloon, and were so intimate with the druggist 
that he would let them come back where he made 
up the prescriptions. The Republican Party is 
the party of Progress, the party that has been in 
control since we have begun to make things by 
machinery and accumulate wealth so rapidly. 

On the other hand the crowd at your Demo- 
cratic meeting was composed of low, common, 
working people that applauded by " stomping " 

1 60 



THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 

their feet and squalling *'Hoo-ee!" They had 
on hickory shirts without any collars, except some 
few of the politicians who wore long-tailed black 
coats, black slouch hats, and narrow black string 
neckties. All of them chewed tobacco, the poli- 
ticians using fine-cut and the hickory-shirt fellows 
navy plug. They left the Opry-house looking 
like a hog-pen. The hickory-shirt crowd not only 
had blue finger nails and calloused hands, but they 
bragged about It. " Horny-handed sons of toil," 
their speakers called them, and they cheered as 
if that were anything to their credit. " The 
great unwashed," was what the Examiner called 
them. They had no big bugs to sit up on their 
platform, only yo-haw farmers with their pants in 
their boots, saloon-keepers, and the lawyers that 
got what criminal practise there was going. 
When they weren't talking flub-dub about indi- 
vidual liberty (which meant for the rough element 
to have their beer whenever they wanted It) , they 
were opposing the Republicans just out of pure 
contrariness, and sneering at them because they 
were nice people — " the God-and-morality party," 

i6i 



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they called us. (I don't see that that is anything 
to be ashamed of.) They seemed out-of-date, 
behind the times. They seemed to belong to An- 
drew Jackson's day. 

Andrew Jackson was all right, and the move- 
ment he headed was all right, for It took the man- 
agement of the Government from the hands of 
the landlords and propertied class and put it into 
the hands of the small farmers and the men with 
little, hand-powered industries. But another rev- 
olution has occurred since then, the transfer of 
ruling authority Into the hands of the railroad 
magnates and the big manufacturers, a transfer 
that began during the Great Rebellion, a period 
the Democrats do their best to Ignore for good 
and sufficient reasons. The business Interests of 
the country were just naturally afraid of the Dem- 
ocrats as reactionaries and Bourbons that never 
learned and never forgot. When Cleveland 
barely scraped through the first time he was 
elected, and It was doubtful If he would scrape 
through, the professor of moral philosophy in my 
college got down on his knees in the classroom and 

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besought the Almighty to avert this terrible ca- 
tastrophe from our beloved country. That shows 
you. 

I hope, my Democratic friend, that I have got 
you good and riled. I hope you are just hopping 
mad, and ready to tear me limb from limb. That 
is what our great statesmen like to see. Anything 
but *^ apathy." Apathy is a terrible thing. Sup- 
pose you were at school and a boy came into the 
yard before the last bell rang with a big red apple 
in his jacket pocket that you figured would just 
about fit you. And suppose you should say to 
him. " Oh, looky ! Looky at that funny bird up 
in the tree yonder ! See him? " And suppose the 
boy was apathetic about funny birds up in trees, 
what chance would there be of your getting his 
big red apple without a fuss? It just spoils every- 
thing when people are apathetic about politics. 
And that's another symptom of the degeneracy of 
the age which we must all deplore. I have known 
Republicans of late to vote for a Democrat be- 
cause they thought he was an honest man. It 
wasn't that way " back home." Party spirit ran 

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high there. Why, I remember one time there 
was a Presidential campaign, and it looked as if 
there was a chance that the Democrats might get 
In and ruin the country. A young fellow I knew 
was a pretty good musician. He was a Repub- 
lican and engaged to a Republican girl, but some- 
how or other he had Democratic friends. They 
were going to get up a glee club, and they asked 
him If he wouldn't coach them in some songs. He 
said he would, not thinking there would be any 
harm in it if he merely coached them and didn't 
actually sing, himself. Well, it just broke off the 
match, that's all. She cut him dead in the street; 
wouldn't have anything more to do with him. 

When you have party spirit like that it sim- 
plifies things immensely, not only for the politi- 
cians but for the voters too. There's no need 
of you spraining your mind thinking what you 
ought to do. Just vote the straight ticket and 
that's all about it. Why, what does all this talk 
about a candidate's being honest amount to, any- 
how? How are you going to tell whether a man's 
honest or not? Maybe he hasn't had a chance to 

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be anything but honest. And what difference 
does it make to you whether he's honest or not, 
when he votes in the interest of his class and 
against the interest of your class? It comes to 
the same thing as far as you're concerned. 

And I hope, too, my Republican friend, that 
you have seen that all the time that I was giving 
it to the Democrats so hot and heavy I was mak- 
ing what Brother John Warnock would call 
" mean, little insinuendoes " at you, too. If 
they're behind the times, why so are you. If 
they're still hurrahing for Andrew Jackson be- 
cause he got manhood suffrage, why, so are you 
still hurrahing for Abraham Lincoln because he 
freed the slaves. The world keeps moving on. 
New occasions bring new duties. There's one 
more transfer of power has to be made. A big 
one — the biggest ever. The right to vote isn't 
all there is to liberty. There's more! The 
right to live and to bring up your children half- 
way decent anyhow, the right to have some little 
time to yourself, to be something besides a mere 
machine. All these great inventions, all these 

i6s 



OUR TOWN 

economics of production and distribution — we 
ought to be getting the good out of them. We 
aren't. Why not? Who is? 

• • • • • • • 

I hope IVe stirred you up, whether you are a 
Republican or a Democrat. If I had to make 
you angry at me in order to stir you up, well and 
good. But rd rather you wouldn't stay pouty 
with me very long. I meant it only to be a boyish 
quarrel, so that the next time I came past your 
house and yodeled, you'd grab your books and 
slate and come tearing out to meet me. 



i66 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

OF the old-time home the Parlor was the 
pinnacle and blossom. How com- 
pletely that has faded and gone is 
shown by the fact that the very name 
of " parlor " seems kind of old-fashioned and be- 
hind the times. Drawing-room, reception-hall, 
library, but not parlor. In my day I have seen it 
depart. Even when I was a little boy, I remem- 
ber, its petals were kind o' droopy compared with 
their stiff rigidity out at Aunt Katy's. 

Aunt Katy was a step-relation twice removed. 
She wore caps with wide strings untied and floating, 
which identifies her period; mine was that wherein 
" The Pilgrim's Progress " was still a rattling 
good adventure story, ere ever Antelope Abe had 
escaped from the circle of bloodthirsty redskins, 
who sought to cut his raw young heart out, by the 
ingenious device of turning handsprings and kick- 
ing Flying Arrow right spang in the nose. 

169 



OUR TOWN 

*''UghI' exclaimed the discomfited chieftain 
as the brave boy — " 

But I digress. 

Aunt Katy had a parlor. The inquisitiveness 
of youth elicited this fact, which seemed to be of 
the nature of a guilty secret, for the motto was: 
" Keep it dark." When In later years I encoun- 
tered the line In the carol about the three kings 
of Orient, 

Myrrh Is mine, Its bitter perfume 

I understood at once how a perfume can be bitter, 
for I remember the day I first stepped into Aunt 
Katy's parlor and, stealthily closing the door be- 
hind me, inhaled the chill, strange aroma — not 
aroma, not scent, not odor; these names are all 
too gross and heavy-handed for that faint, elusive 
quality that the air had. In the cellar below for 
years and years there had been apples stored away. 
Was It the ghosts of these apples, since gone to 
their long home? Was it the pale spook of lav- 
ender from the clothes-press In the spare bedroom 
off the parlor? Was It the trapped essences of 

170 




■♦o 

Si 






o 
Co 

o 
o 

V. 









THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

cakes and pies and quince preserves that had 
thinly crept in through the door-crack and sought 
in vain to find their way out? Was it all these 
together, or was it that the air, prisoned and shut 
away from the glad light of day, had turned sad 
and regretful, calling to mind the times when it had 
whooped and screamed across all the white fields 
that lay between Aunt Katy's house and the far 
country of the Northern Star; when it had played 
ring-around-the-rosy with the romping leaves; 
when it had rumpled the white petticoats of mod- 
est poplars, the while the thunder growled its 
surly disapproval of such carryings-on; when it 
had swooned in ecstasy over the blossoming apple- 
trees? 

It was lonely for the air in Aunt Katy's parlor, 
waiting, waiting. Sometimes a lone fly, arrived 
there by some miracle impossible to believe, 
buzzed on the pane behind the thick blue paper 
shades with a blast so loud it seemed a trombone's. 
And presently the fly died out of pure ennui and 
lonesomeness. The air crept languidly about the 
room, with a motion to which a clock-hand's were 

173 



OUR TOWN 

hurried and Impetuous, vainly seeking an exit. 
There were only two occasions whereon it might 
be free to come and go. One of them was past 
forever. The nest was empty; the birds were 
flown. There was none left to " stand up " now 
with anybody while Brother Longenecker read the 
binding words and glad dishes rattled in the din- 
ing-room. All that the poor, pale air in Aunt 
Katy's parlor had to look forward to was the day 
when horses and buggies would be hitched to the 
front fence as if Aunt Katy's were the meeting- 
house, and when the folks would have their Sun- 
day clothes on, although it was a week-day, and 
would speak subduedly and with many a sigh such 
words as : "A shock of corn fully ripe," and 
" Oh, well, she's better off, I s'pose," and *' We 
all have to go when our time comes," and " D'ye 
reckon Barzillai'll come in for his sheer, after 
all?" 

A narrow strip of land, the North Atlantic sea- 
board not only considers itself (i) a part of the 
United States, but also that is (2) the United 
States, the mountain-chain to the westward of it 

174 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

being practically the " take-off " for the jumplng- 
off place. Against the pestilential heresy of 
Proposition Number 2 I wish to raise my feeble 
typewriter in earnest protest. In the matter of 
Proposition Number i, I am open to argument. 
Technically speaking, I suppose Til have to grant 
that the North Atlantic States are pro forma In the 
Union; aside from the legal fiction, I deny that 
the inhabitants thereof are our kind of folks at all. 
For peace' sake, we put up with them; we listen 
to what they have to say, and try hard to remem- 
ber our manners and not let them know what we 
think of them. But there comes a time (and this 
Is such a time) when the truth must come out. 
If you must know, we think they're scarcely hu- 
man, let alone fellow-citizens. Americans? Not 
by a jugful. They may think so, but they're not. 
They can't even speak the language. " Quite 
some snow!" Is that our mother-tongue? Is 
" burla " comprehensible to reasoning beings? 
That's what they say when they mean *' boiler." 
They call a swing a *' scup." The land! And 
claim kin with us! They may claim it. 

177 



OUR TOWN 

In that arrogant and stuck-up land I s'pose they 
do not prize the Parlor, because they've always 
had it. I reckon when the moving-vans drove up 
from the water-front with the Pilgrim Fathers' 
household goods aboard, there were haircloth 
sofas, and marble-topped center-tables, and real 
hand-painted pictures with which to dike out the 
Parlor, or what they, like enough, called the " best 
rum "; but it wasn't so in the real United States, 
where the people come from that amount to some- 
thing. I remember Aunt Katy telling about how 
it was when she married her first husband and 
moved up from Clark County. Her man had to 
go to mill, which took him the best part of two 
days, and there was she, all alone, in a log cabin 
that hadn't any door except a quilt hung up. And 
she could hear the wolves howling over there In 
the woods where the Stillwell place is now. 

" Tell some more. Aunt Katy. Tell about 
bears. Did you ever see a bear. Aunt Katy? 
You did? Wasn't you afraid it would bite? " 

And Aunt Katy told about a lady she knew that 
killed a bear with the ax. All by herself, so she 

178 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

did. Her husband was afraid, and run and hid. 
" Hit him ag'in, Polly! " he'd holler. 

'' And, one time, when Pap was alive — " 
But, laws-a-me ! PU never get through if I keep 
wandering from my text this way. 

However, you can see that in a one-room cabin 
with a floor of hewed-out slabs, a quilt hung up 
for a door, and mud chinking between the logs — 
they still have some of these old cabins back home, 
and use 'em for cow-houses — there wasn't much 
of a chance for a Parlor. The country had to be 
settled up, and folks had to make arrangements 
to sleep, and get dough to put in the bake-kettle 
and cover up with coals, and meat to hang up In 
front of the fireplace to roast, before they began 
to put on style. First the essentials of existence, 
then Art. 

I suppose it is up to me now to define Art. 
Just how dangerous it is to attempt this, especially 
when the word is spelled with a capital A, I trust 
I am fully sensible. It is a sort of Intellectual 
shooing the chickens out of the garden through a 
narrow gate. While you are getting one through 

179 



OUR TOWN 

(while you are delimiting one field of Art) the 
others are back among the cabbages tenfold more 
the children of the Bad Place than they were be- 
fore. And while you are chasing them, the one 
chicken comes through the gate again. Also, the 
job is complicated by the row of distinguished citi- 
zens leaning on the garden fence, sneering at the 
futility of all your efforts, most of them in Wind- 
sor ties, velvet jackets, and painty pants, with a 
sprinkling of those whose inky middle finger be- 
trays the fact that they are not artists, but chron- 
iclers of artists' doings. Nevertheless, I am going 
to try it If I break a trace. 

Art Is a subject of which we can all truly say: 
" I know well enough what It is, but I can't ex- 
press myself." 

I think I can come a little closer to the bull's 
eye than that. I should say: Art is what you 
would put in the Parlor. 

For instance: The almanac, hung by a string 
by its northwest corner to the mantel, was in the 
sitting-room. But Fox's " Book of Martyrs " 
(wherein were pictures of folks undergoing the 

i8o 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

same rough-house for conscience' sake that had 
evidently been the unhappy fate of the gentleman 
on the second page of the almanac) was in the 
Parlor at Aunt Katy's. Her Testament, worn 
and brown and tattered at the place where the 
good words are that begin: '* Let not your heart 
be troubled," was In the window of the sitting- 
room. The big pictorial Bible, bought of a stu- 
dent who was working his way through college 
and expected to become a minister of the Gospel, 
but found that it paid better to sell Bibles on sub- 
scription, was on the center-table in the Parlor. 
It was a magnificent affair weighing eighteen 
pounds, had lids embossed in high and scooped- 
out curves, was " profusely embellished with high- 
class reproductions of the Old Masters," and had 
enormous ornamental initial letters to each chap- 
ter. There was one big A that was a tent, and a 
soldier was throwing a spear, the spear making 
the crosspiece of the A. It looked interesting, but 
the reading said, " And these are the names of the 
men that shall stand with you : of the tribe of Reu- 
ben; Elizur the son of Shedeur. Of Simeon; She- 

i8i 



OUR TOWN 

lumiel the son of Zurishaddai — " Oh, a whole 
lot more like that, and nothing about the man in 
the tent and what he was going to do with the 
spear. 




No good at all for chewing-wax. 

Aunt Katy's work-basket, with her spools of 
thread, and papers of needles, her scissors, and 
the ball of beeswax (no good at all for chewing- 
wax; it crumbs up so in the mouth), was in the 
sitting-room. But the alum basket was in the 

182 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

Parlor, as befitted its station as a Work of Art. 
To begin with, it was a basket of corn-husks, 
deftly woven and fashioned to look like those in 
the steel engraving frontispieces of the Ladies' 
Repository, wherein girls in low-neck-and-short- 
sleeve dresses, gathered at the waist and made 
full in the skirt, without a smidgen of trimming 
or ruffles, sit on a mossy bank holding this kind 
of a flaring, shallow, and spilly basket full of 
pretty posies. Also the little bits of girls in the 
kind of pictures in the Department for the Young, 
the ones that wear white stockings and slippers, 
held on by tapes crossed over their extremely nar- 
row insteps, carried this kind of a basket with 
flowers in it, unless they held a watering-pot over 
a flower-bed fenced in with little hoops. If those 
little girls weren't all dead and gone by this time, 
I should hesitate to add what I am going to; but 
they had on short skirts widely buoyed out by — 
I feel so sort of red in the face and bashful — 
what shall I call 'em? Let me see. Trouserines 
would be a good name. Very wide and full they 
were, and came down nearly to the ankles in 

183 



OUR TOWN 

points that were all punched full of round holes. 
I have heard say that these confections were tied 
on at the knee. Fancy! 

You know what alum is that you get at the 
drug-store. It's good when your store-teeth don't 
fit right and hurt your month, or if you are learn- 
ing to play the guitar and your fingers get sore 
at the tips. Dip 'em into alum-water, and it 
toughens them so you can twang away all day and 
never feel it. And I think they use, It, too, when 
they put up these little cucumber pickles, but I 
won't be sure. Well, anyways, you take a good 
deal of this alum and some water and cook them 
together till they're done. I don't remember now 
how you tell that. . . . No, I don't think 
you use a broom-straw; as I recollect, that's for 
cake. But when the stuff is done, you put the 
corn-husk basket In It and put it away somewhere 
in a still place where nothing will bother It. As 
the hot liquor cools, the alum settles on the basket, 
and in a few days the graceful, curving lines of 
the basket are all hidden by sharp-pointed, clear 
chunks of alum, most beautiful to behold. The 

184 




I 



o 



v.. 
-5i 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

last time, though, that I saw Aunt Katy's alum 
basket, its glory was departing. Some of the 
crystals had come away, betraying the sordid sub- 
structure of corn-husk, and such as remained were 
dusty and had lost their pristine ruggedness of 
contour. Too many pink tongues had been sur- 
reptitiously extended in the pursuit of trustworthy 
information as to whether it tasted as much like 
rock-candy as it looked. 

Up in Aunt Katy's garret hung bunches of 
boneset (the tea of which will cure 'most any- 
thing, or ought to, for it's bitter enough), sage, 
pennyroyal, mint, catnip — I don't know what all 
kinds of '* yarbs," good to make the dinner smell 
good, or to stew up in a tin cup on the back of 
the stove when anybody about the house was 
grunty. These were useful, don't you see? In 
the Parlor, on a black velvet stand on the marble- 
topped center-table, covered with a glass bell, was 
another " yarb," which could by no possibility Ke 
of the least account. It was a Work of Art. The 
plant had been cast into scalding water and left 
there until its green flesh had come off its poor lit- 

187 



OUR TOWN 

tie bones, which had then been bleached to snowy 
whiteness and fastened up for exhibition as a 
" skeletonized plant." From what I hear it must 
have taken particular skill to get it to look right. 

We are now in a position to generalize still 
further on Art. Art is what you would put in 
the Parlor; and you would put in the Parlor that 
which is of no earthly account but has had as much 
skill and time put on it as if it were. Also, this 
skill and time must be plainly apparent. It must 
advertise that the person creating it could do a 
first-rate job of useful work if he had a mind to, 
but that he doesn't have to, being a peg above that 
station of life. 

As a sort of radio-active energy. Art percolated 
through the walls of the Parlor backward through 
the house — the kitchen, which was the most useful 
room, getting least of those enlivening and beau- 
tifying rays. There the rag carpet was a hlt-or- 
miss. In the sitting-room red and yellow and blue 
stripes with their gay chains did what they could 
to dispel the horrid thought that Aunt Katy was 
using up her old clothes, and her three dead hus- 

i88 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

bands' old clothes, and all the rags she could lay 
her hands on honestly to cut up Into strips and 
sew together, end to end, that she might have 
something to cover the floor and keep it warm. 
But in the Parlor, entirely free from the least sus- 
picion of economy or usefulness, was a beautiful 
ingrain of such reds and greens that I deny the 
imputation that the shades were drawn to keep 
the sun from fading them. That was done, not 
out of consideration for the ingrain, but for the 
sun; the colors would have hurt his eyes and likely 
put him out of business. 

Similarly with the quilts about the house. 
Deeply do I regret my ignorance of all the dif- 
ferent patterns of quilts. The Log Cabin I know, 
the Eight-pointed Star I know, the Hen and Chick- 
ens, and the Mexican Feather; but when I go out 
in company and the conversation turns on quilts, 
I have to sit there with my jaw hanging, and not 
a word out of me because I don't want to let on 
how green I am. But this much I can safely say: 
that the quilts that were meant for use, and where 
company wasn't supposed to look, were made up 

189 



OUR TOWN 

of scraps, this from Adonlram's '' wammus," and 
that from Trypheny's " tier," and t'other from 




Her husband was afraid. 

the old blue dress that faded so ; whereas the quilt 
upon the bed in the spare bedroom off the Parlor 
was made out of calico bought a-purpose. I wish 
I could show you one such, pieced so long ago 

190 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

that the frail fingers which made those fine and 
even stitches are now fully restored to the earth 
from whence they came. But the colors, printed 
in another age, as you might say, are just as bright 
to-day as ever. As for the weavers of old blue- 
and-white bedspreads with their pretty patterns, I 
suppose they have clean vanished from the earth. 
I have one that says in the corner: " Pyna Rose, 
Wove by Joseph Buechel, 1847." I wonder what 
he'd think to find it a portiere, a sort of curio, 
something they don't have nowadays. 

If they don't have such colors in ingrain car- 
pets and in calicos as they used to have, neither 
do they have them in pictures. I don't mean 
hand-painted pictures, but the colored lithographs 
that used to be before steel engravings with their 
cool grays conferred distinction on the Parlor. I 
don't mean chromos, either; I mean the real old 
lithographs, published by Currier & Ives, of Nas- 
sau Street, New York City. When you looked 
upon those pictures you realized that " Gotham " 
could not be so utterly and entirely a wicked city 
as was portrayed in " Sunshine and Shadow of 

191 



OUR TOWN 

New York," all about Harry Hill's, and the-ay- 
ters, and the Five Points, where they would knock 
you down as quick as look at you, and take your 
pocketbook away from you, and all like that. 
There must have been some nice people there; at 
any rate, Mr. Currier and Mr. Ives must have 
been nice people, or they wouldn't and couldn't 
have made such nice pictures. 

There was " Esther," for example, a fine-look- 
ing lady, in a short-waisted dress cut low in the 
neck, her hair done up high and a big shell comb 
to hold it, and three large, fat curls, glossy like 
stovepipe hats, hanging in front of each ear. And 
there was " General Winfield Scott," whose only 
fault was that his hair was a deep blue, like the 
ocean wave. And there was " The Sale of the 
Pet Lamb," which deplored the commercial spirit 
of the age, for it depicted in startling colors the 
greed for gold that would actuate an inhuman 
parent to sell to a cold-hearted butcher a house- 
hold pet, in spite of the obvious fact that the 
three children of the said household, each arrayed 
in a red, yellow, or blue frock, were weeping 

192 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

copiously into a handkerchief of the same color 
as their respective frock. And when I use the ex- 
pression " startling colors," pray do not mistake 
it for a flower of rhetoric. The colors were 
startling. Never were such reds, so red and in- 
flammatory, such blues, so like Itahan skies, such 
yellows, so " yaller." 

It was of another product of these purveyors 
of Art that Christina Moots told, when she cele- 
brated the glories of Mrs. Hanks's Parlor. Being 
*' Pennsylwany Dutch," she was a little mixed as 
to the genders of personal pronouns, but she knew 
what she liked in Art, for she declared, " Ach, 
my! Such a pretty picture she has hangin' up! 
All about Chesus an' her mammy." 

Female beauty, historical portraiture, and moral 
and religious sentiment had their appeals, but no 
true American (by which I mean an American 
boy) could gaze unmoved upon another picture 
from the gifted hands of Mr. Currier and Mr. 
Ives. I now refer to the Work of Art entitled: 
" The Gallant Charge of the Kentucky Cavalry 
under Colonel Marshall at the Battle of Buena 

193 



OUR TOWN 

Vista." Oh, say! Now, that was all right. 
Horses, you know. United States horses and Mex- 
ican horses charging at each other llckety-spllt, 
and our brave heroes with their s-words slashing 
at the darn Mexicans, who don't fight fair at all, 
consarn their pictures! Whaddy you think? 
•They had big, long spears that they poked our 
fellows with, so that they could run a spear clear 
through a United Stateser and have It come out 
at his back (unless It got caught on a rib, of 
course) before he could get close enough with his 
s-word to haggle up the Mexican's features. Do 
you call that fair? Well, I don't. It didn't say 
on the picture how it all came out, but our side 
won; it always does, because we're always right, 
and always fighting for liberty; but the way they 
did It, I guess, was this : Now, s'posin' I was the 
United States man and you were the Mexican man. 
And you'd go to stick me with your spear. And 
I'd grab a-holt of it just like this, and kind of pull 
you along, changing my hold on your spear, till I 
got you close up to me, and then I'd hit you a 
clout, just like that! Oh, excuse me! I didn't 

194 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

go to hurt you. I was just trying to show you 
how it was. Why! Does your nose bleed as 
easy as all that? 

But the appeal of the primary colors, real 
red, and real blue, and real " yaller," is too di- 
rect, and in the process of time *' Esther " and 
'' The Sale of the Pet Lamb " and '' The Gallant 
Charge of the Kentucky Cavalry under Colonel 
Marshall at the Battle of Buena Vista " drifted 
back into the sitting-room and the kitchen even, 
before the cold-toed onslaught of the high-class 
steel engraving. When I gaze upon a steel en- 
graving I feel guiltily conscious of my lowly be- 
ginnings. I am reminded that I say, " I reckon 
so," unless I am very careful, when I should say, 
" I presume so." I was never compelled when 1 
was little to go to dancing-school, never forced to 
sit on a piano-stool and drudge at Richardson's 
School for the Piano-forte (to this day I can 
scarcely remember that it's thumb under for F in 
the right hand). I never had early advantages, 
and the steel engraving looks over my head with 
the cold hauteur of the better classes who do not 

195' 



OUR TOWN 

know that common folks exist. Far, far above 
my rank In life are those who have " Washington 
and his Generals " and " Lincoln and his Cab- 
inet " in their parlors, the latter especially inter- 
esting on account of Mr. Seward, who seems to 
be wondering if there isn't gas escaping somewhere, 
or If the folks haven't had picked-up codfish lately. 
There were no molten or graven images with 
their attendant moral obliquities about Aunt 
Katy's parlor, unless you choose to include a shiny 
china object upon the mantelpiece, which was be- 
lieved and asserted to be a dog, but which one 
might have bowed down to and served with a 
clear conscience, for it was not the likeness of any- 
thing in the heaven above, or the earth beneath, 
or the waters under the earth. It was an orna- 
ment, just as were the conch-shells with their 
glossy, flesh-hued lining. Like them, the china 
• dog demanded service, imperious care lest it be 
broken, meticulous wipings with a damp cloth, 
and ritual dustings. But there was a distinction 
between them. The china dog was of the very 
highest order of aristocracy; it rendered nothing in 

196 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

exchange for all this care. It didn't even pretend 
to. It was exactly in the position of those who 
have '* an independent income." The conch-shells 
were a grade below that. They had to make 
some slight effort to pay their way. 

You must remember that while the people 
round about had never seen a body of water 
larger than Silver Lake, they were all descendants 
of seafolk. The sea was home to us, and so eager 
were we for any news from there that we main- 
tained the conch-shells in high honor, because if 
we held them to the ear and barkened closely they 
told us what the sea said. We could hear the roar 
of waves which the shells transmitted to us au- 
thentically, having that strange power. We after- 
ward found out it was but the rushing of our own 
blood we heard — the salt sea within us. 

There are some that say the Parlor's doom was 
sealed the day a carpenter named Carhart first 
took notice that his accordion sounded louder and 
finer when the wind was sucked through the reeds 
instead of being squeezed through them. That 
meant the discovery of the parlor organ. Preg- 

199 



OUR TOWN 

nant event! Away went tinkling dulcimers to the 
garret — always out of tune, and poor things at 
the best. The parlor organ compelled the change 
of the piano from a luxury possible only to the 
rich into a necessity of life, within the reach of 
common folks. It made the piano a whole lot 
better instrument in the process of leveling down. 
Make a note of that. But whether Pa could af-. 
ford a piano or had to get the cheaper organ, the 
shades in the Parlor had to be rolled up each day, 
and in cold weather there had to be a fire there, 
so that Elizabeth Jane could do her practising, 
thumb under for F in the right hand, thumb under 
for G in the left hand. And when Elizabeth Jane 
got so that she could play a " piece " without too 
many mistakes, it was fare ye well forever to the 
cold and aristocratic aloofness of the Parlor from 
the daily round, the common task. 

Carhart helped; I grant you that. But I main- 
tain that the disappearance of the Parlor was cos- 
mic, elemental, the outworking of great economic 
forces, one manifestation of the spirit of the age 
which summons up on quo warranto proceedings 

200 



THE PARLOR BACK HOME 

every man-made Institution, and would have it 
show cause why It should longer stay on the pay- 
roll. '^ What good are you? " It wants to know 
of every man and every set of men. The old- 
time aristocratic, Idle, useless Parlor went because 
It was more bother than It was good. Take warn- 
ing, all In the same line of business ! 

I never could see that the Idling-place about a 
house had any better right to be prettier than the 
working-place about the house. Whether It was 
the First Isaiah or the Second Isaiah that wrote the 
fortieth chapter of the book of that name, I don't 
know or care. He had good Ideas, whichever one 
he was, and when he says : " Every valley shall 
be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be 
made low," I'm right with him, whether the sen- 
timent apply to house-furnlshing or — or — other 
matters. 



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